


A Song for the Past

by frankannestein



Series: The Praeities Trilogy [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, F/M, Fantasy, Final Fantasy XII Spoilers, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age Countdown Project, Fluff, Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-01
Updated: 2010-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 103,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankannestein/pseuds/frankannestein
Summary: When Archadia annexes Dalmasca, Lady Ashe creates a resistance movement and Daina, a Knight of House Nabradia, follows her into exile. During the struggle, a band of allies joins them, including two Dalmascan orphans, a sky pirate and his viera partner, and a man who all believed dead. Together, they rally against the tyranny of the Archadian Empire.
Relationships: Basch fon Ronsenburg/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Praeities Trilogy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647112





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story without any idea of how epic it would end up being, but now that it’s over, I’m more than grateful for the chance to dive so deeply into the rich world of Ivalice.  
> Daina’s name is a sort of play on the title, “A Song for the Past.” In Lithuanian, “daina” means “song,” and “praeities” is the past. However, I borrowed the words without any knowledge of the language, so I won't pretend I knew what I was doing.  
> To write the story, I used many references to the battle system, the bestiary, the items list, and even the theme song. It’s been a whirl.  
> ***This book is available for purchase from Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/author-frankannestein. The price covers printing the book - I receive no royalties from sales!***

When the royal city Nabudis and her king fell to the juggernaut that was the Archadian Empire pushing her borders westward, which catapulted Prince Rasler into a king without a kingdom in one apocalyptic explosion of Mist, Daina Praeities was not there.

Ten years earlier, on a misty gray morning, she snuck into her parents’ room while they slept. She sought her father’s sword, a length of damascus steel and mythril longer than she was and which she was expressly forbidden to touch. She tiptoed with her prize to the backyard, drew it, and tried to swing it. Her childish strength was no match for the blade. Without her quite knowing how, the sword tangled with her skirt, opening a long gash in her thigh. Her shrieks brought her mother.

“Abyssal Celebrant!” her mother gasped when she saw the blood. “Daina!”

Roused by the noise, Daina’s father made his slow, calm way into the yard. He leaned against a cottonwood shedding snow-like flurries, one callused hand rubbing his unshaven jaw. Behind the house, the early morning light strengthened until the last stars of night vanished from the sky.

Daina’s mother hustled her inside. She applied potion to Daina’s leg, removing all evidence of the wound, and then helped her change her dress. Daina, her fright forgotten, left her mother tsking over the ripped skirt, dashed back outside, and hefted the sword once more.

“Daina, what under the sun do you think you’re doing?” shouted her mother.

“Slaying wyrms!” Daina said.

In Ivalice, the Mist that enabled magickal abilities in the sapient races also affected the abilities of the local wildlife. Plants, overcome by aggression, pulled up their roots and walked the land like children in baggy pajamas. Beasts often grew larger than full-grown humes, even tall ones like Daina’s father. They were feathered and furred, scaled and skinless, all hungry, all dangerous. The oldest of the beasts, the wyrms, were the most fearsome. Centuries past, a collective of magi had bound the wyrms’ power by affixing inscribed collars around the wyrms’ necks. Should the magicks in the collars fade, setting the wyrms free, the peoples of Ivalice would suffer their wrath. Daina, her head full of glory and grandeur, had decided that it was her duty to make sure that this never happened.

The sword overbalanced her and she dropped it as she fell, catching herself on her hands and knees. The sword’s point buried itself in the dirt. She tugged on the handle, but she couldn’t budge it. Two hot tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks.

Her father’s laughter boomed across the yard, startling a few white doves from their roosts under the eaves.

“If she isn’t afraid of the blade, there’ll be no stopping her, Lisel,” he said to his exasperated wife. He wound an arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “She’ll just have to learn how to use it.”

Lisel sighed and turned out of his embrace. “A wyrmslayer! It’s those stories you tell her before bed, Bertrand. Of what use is a sword to our daughter?”

“It can teach her honor and to keep her word. It can teach her to know her own mind,” he said. “Faram has called her, and she has heeded. I ask instead, of what use is our daughter to Nabradia?”

With that, he joined Daina. He braced her thin, small wrists, raising the tip of the sword out of the dirt. “Like this, little one. Do not fight it. Let the blade be your teacher.”

It rose, silver-white in the early sunlight, and shone in her wide, happy eyes. Later that day, Bertrand took her to Verdpale Palace and enrolled her in the swordsmanship lessons reserved for squires and the sons of knights.

The boys were older than she, most of them bigger, and they watched her from a safe, amused distance, not sure what to do with this lily-haired girl-child in their midst. “Whoever heard of a lady knight?” they teased.

“No one,” Daina answered, chin raised defiantly. “I’m first.”

She found masters wherever she went, from the ornery chocobo that liked to yank out the hair of his unsuspecting handlers, to the chores her teachers set her at the end of her lessons, to her fellow knights-in-training. She took every kind word to heart, and returned every slight twofold. She treasured her friends. She gloried in her rivals. As her skill grew, so did her reputation, until even Prince Rasler Heios Nabradia and his retainers came to the lessons to watch her.

Her mother submitted more or less gracefully to her strange upbringing. In spite of Daina’s increasing collection of scars and trousers, her voice seemed to come from Faram, the Scion of Light himself. Daina spent as much time singing as she did in the ring, to cheer her mother.

Daina’s childhood was not a peaceful time for the tiny kingdom of Nabradia. Prince Rasler was engaged to marry Princess Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca, of the slightly larger kingdom of Dalmasca in the southwest, to unite their lands. Daina had seen for herself how much the two rulers-to-be loved each other. Their obvious affection was a sign of hope in troubled times.

“From empire to empire the unrest grows,” Lord Rasler once commented within her hearing. He moved to a merlon and rested on his hands, squinting into the sun and the breeze. “In the east, Archades looms ever avaricious. Emperor Gramis and the sons of Solidor fix their eyes upon us. On our western flank, Rozarria does the same. War is coming.”

“Perhaps the Lady Ashe would like a lady guard,” Sir Bertrand suggested. “A lady protector could serve her better than her Knights of the Order.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Prince Rasler agreed mildly, smiling at some private joke. He stood in his magnificent white and gold armor, the sun striking his platinum hair, and swept along the barbican, his navy-blue cloak streaming out behind him. Daina glowed with pride.

So it was done. Daina Praeities knelt before King Nazewell and was granted her knighthood in his service. When Rasler wed Ashelia, Daina bid farewell to her parents and took her place at Lady Ashe’s left hand, to be her shield and her sword. She wore a feminine version of the Dalmascan knight’s uniform, her long, white-blonde hair plaited down her back and her katana belted around her waist. Like her male counterparts, Daina kept her counsel to herself, spoke only when spoken to, and remained in the shadows, ever watchful.

She loved the Dalmascan royal city of Rabanastre at first sight, with its dry desert heat, eye-popping color, and booming bazaar, although she did miss the refreshing greenery of her home, the Nabradian royal city of Nabudis. Then, like a primrose plucked from the vine, Nabudis vanished forever.

Within weeks of the wedding, Archadian troops moved into Nabudis on their way to meet the supposed encroaching Rozarrian forces. Archadia slaughtered every last soul in the royal city, including Lord Rasler’s father, King Nazewell.

To hold the invading Archadian empire at the Nabradia-Dalmasca border, Lord Rasler went with Dalmasca’s Order of Knights to defend the fortress in Nalbina Town. There the young king fell, and Nabradia’s royal line ended with the shot of a single arrow.

In Rabanastre, Lady Ashe publicly mourned her husband. Daina privately mourned the loss of her home, her family, and her kings. The city of Nabudis, she learned, became a dead land of concentrated Mist, transformed into a necrohol swarming with unholy monsters, a place not fit for any hume to wander.

The world of Ivalice was changing. Daina had not been set completely adrift, however. She had a place, she had a duty. She watched over her princess and swore new vows. She would protect Lady Ashe, as she could not protect Lord Rasler. She would honor his wish that she serve his beloved bride with her life.

Her honor and her vows were all she had left.

* * *

“We should go, my lady,” Daina said as gently and respectfully as she could from the balcony door, looking out at the black-veiled form of Ashe. “It isn’t safe here.”

Her lady made no reply. Disgusted, Daina retreated into Ashe’s rooms. She moved silently through the dark, welcoming the hot nighttime breeze drifting in from Giza Plains. The people of Dalmasca dressed with fewer layers than Daina was used to, but the pervading heat made this a necessity. Even though her empire-waisted coat bared her midriff to her sword belt, she was sweating. The coat swirled about her feet when she reached the opposite wall and turned around, the ruffled hem fluttering. Moisture collected along the tops of her breasts; the green coat exposed her cleavage, the way the men’s undershirts bared a hint of toned chest, a long diamond of skin below their collarbones. She sighed, trusting the dark, which turned the coat’s gold detailing silver, to hide how she sponged away the sweat with the heel of her gloved hand. These Dalmascans and their idea of decent clothing!

Three ladies-in-waiting hovered near the outer door. Daina ignored them as efficiently as the princess was ignoring her. Her katana hung at her hip, where the green coat wouldn’t interfere with drawing it. She was a knight, not a handmaiden. None of the well-bred palace ladies owned so much as a dagger.

Perhaps if they had, if the women had been taught to fight for what was theirs, the kings of Dalmasca and Nabradia would live still. Fuming over this gross mismanagement of resources, Daina resumed her pacing.

Princess Ashe was grieving. She’d lost her father, her husband, and was about to lose her kingdom to the Archadian Empire. To make matters worse, Dalmasca would not fall entirely due to outside forces. No one could be trusted, not even the Order of Knights. Captain Ronsenburg was a traitor, a kingslayer, the man solely responsible for King Raminas’s death. According to Marquis Ondore, Lady Ashe’s Bhujerban uncle, the ex-knight had been executed for his crime.

However, Captain Ronsenburg’s death hadn’t sated the avarice of the Archadian Empire. Emperor Gramis’s fleet was currently flying across the Estersand. Within the hour, Archadian judges would arrive to occupy Rabanastre. There was no one left who could oppose House Solidor’s military might.

The frighteningly few remaining Dalmascan knights had arrived from Nalbina that night, fleeing before the Imperial sky fleet. Lady Ashe, Dalmasca’s last daughter, could no longer dwell in Rabanastre. If she stayed to meet the judges, Ashe would soon rejoin her father and husband. The knights must spirit her to safety if any hope remained of regaining Dalmasca’s independence in future.

Furiously, Daina swiped at her wet cheeks. Nabudis, the verdant royal city of Nabradia, had already been relegated to a footnote in the annals of history. Her kingdom, her countrymen, her father and mother – everybody she knew was dead. Her home had devolved into a haunt for ghouls. Her life belonged to Lady Ashe now, bound as they were by her vows, but Ashe . . .

Daina suspected Ashe wasn’t even crying. The princess stood beneath the stars in utter stillness. The moonlight and her black, two-piece mourning gown leached her bare midriff of its usual rosy hue. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Daina turned on her heel, kicking angrily at the rug. For what could Lady Ashe possibly be waiting? Everything was in readiness. With the aid of Marquis Ondore and the newborn Resistance (comprising the self-proclaimed fiercest, most loyal sons of Dalmasca), the announcement of _the noble Princess Ashe, who, wrought with grief at her kingdom’s defeat, has taken her own life,_ would ring through Ivalice by morning, and the real Princess Ashe could disappear. She would assume the name _Amalia_ and gather enough forces to reclaim her throne when the time was right. The marquis was poised to aid them in their time underground with cold, hard gil, sundry supplies, and news.

The plan hinged on Ashe’s survival. So why was she standing there, dry-eyed and serene, stroking her wedding ring and that of her lord that she wore next to it, pretending that Daina’s words were the wind shuffling through the sands of the desert?

Taking a deep breath to still her tears and her temper both, Daina approached the balcony for one more attempt. “Please, my lady. I cannot ensure your safety here. We must go.”

“Where would you have me go?” Ashe snapped, speaking directly to Daina for the first time. Her fair hair glimmered through the black veil attached to her tiara. In a low, bitter voice, she added, “Nowhere is safe.”

Chastised, Daina retreated. She was a protector, not an advisor. If Lady Ashe would not go, then Daina could not make her.

In a dreadful sourness of spirit, she realized that she did not like the princess. Yet she’d sworn to protect this haughty, distant woman with her life.

Daina narrowed her eyes at nothing. Yes, she had sworn to protect Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca in blood before Faram, Scion of Light. So that was what Daina was going to do, whether Ashe – _Amalia_ – liked it or not.

A burst of clanking and jingling from the hall startled Daina out of her brooding. She rushed to the outer room, drawing her sword with the silky hiss of metal on wood, too late to stop the lady-in-waiting who opened the door. Daina shoved the older woman out of the way and halted the door with her foot, but the light from the hall blinded her. She leveled her katana at the average hume’s height, ready to skewer in the throat anyone who tried to enter.

“These are a lady’s private rooms, and you are not welcome here,” she called. “Leave now!”

“No time for propriety,” a deep voice said. The door shuddered and then slammed into Daina hard enough to break her stance. The bottom edge crushed her booted toes. A tall, broad-shouldered man muscled his way inside, his plated leather armor jingling. He didn’t seem to notice Daina’s uniform in the dark, the golden spaulders, the vambrace on her left arm, or her thigh-high greaves, for he then said, “You, girl. Make sure the lady’s things are prepared.”

Daina bit her lips on an ill-natured retort. Instead, she sheathed her katana. She had recognized his voice. “Captain Azelas,” she greeted, and then saluted her superior.

Vossler York Azelas, erstwhile friend and colleague of the traitor, former Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg. Captain Azelas wore his dark brown hair a little long, brushed back from his noble, intelligent face, tanned from long days in the Dalmascan sun. A greatsword was strapped to his back. He blinked at her. He did not return the salute.

“Vossler.”

Lady Ashe – Amalia – had finally deigned to come inside, her voice warm with relief. She unpinned the tiara from her softly bobbed hair and then placed the golden circlet on a divan. Her clothes, revealed when she removed her veil, were sensible, if overly elegant, for traversing the labyrinthine paths through the Garamsythe Waterway, which was how they were to smuggle her out of the palace and Rabanastre.

Azelas went to one knee. “Majesty.”

“What word have you?” Ashe-Amalia asked.

Daina noticed the former princess was back to ignoring her.

“We are lost,” Azelas told the carpet. “By morning, Archadia will occupy the entire city. We must flee. At once.”

“Of course,” Amalia said, and Daina felt a flare of irritation. Why listen to Vossler Azelas, but not to Daina Praeities?

Then, Captain Azelas did a strange thing. He held a mythril sword, just the size for a woman, out to Amalia. Amalia took it with a familiarity that told Daina the princess knew how to use it.

She gaped at them, her stomach sinking, her vows turning to ash in her mouth.

If Amalia could fight, then what need had she for a lady knight?

* * *

When Captain Azelas escorted the sword-bearing Amalia into the Garamsythe Waterway to rendezvous with the main Resistance force, Daina followed them. There was nothing else to be done. Amalia’s three ladies-in-waiting stayed behind to ensure Princess Ashelia had a proper funeral.

They went in secret. Downward slipped the Resistance, picking up fighters the way a river pulls soil from its banks. They saw no one else, spoke to no one else. Through darkened palace corridors they stole, through the treasury filled with riches fit for a king but not an exiled princess. They descended to the scullery, through an ancient, unlocked, wrought iron gate, and finally, into the gloomy, bricked corridors of the waterway. The light that illuminated their scared, determined, and grieving faces was faintly blue, the water distinctly green. It smelled bad, but since Amalia did not shy from entering a sewer, no one else dared to mention it.

A group of twenty marching through standing water and narrow brick tunnels, Daina noted, made a tremendous racket. Four knights only remained of the Order; the rest of the Resistance members hailed from the regulars. She drew her katana and slew the dire rats and steelings as they appeared like the others were doing in front of her. Fear of infected rodents, four-legged and winged, still rode high in Dalmasca. The plague that had emptied half of Rabanastre’s streets was only two years quashed.

Infected rodents weren’t the greatest of their worries, either. The sewers abounded with hostile life that grew larger the farther they traveled: horned gigantoads trailing slime, malboro overkings spewing bad breath, and one angry, hairy, triple-jawed baritine croc harried their renegade band. Haunted by ghosts, personal and real, the night passed heavily. Daina’s strength flagged. It was slay, run, listen for pursuit, and slay again, for hours.

She made the mistake of defending herself against a blue and red flying fish that exploded out of the water in front of her, deadly tusks protruding from its heavy lower jaw. As soon as her blade sliced into the fish, two more of the hyena-sized creatures appeared from below the surface. They dazzled the troops with their eerie beauty, fins flowing like hair underwater, and then corkscrewed into a group of helpless, bemused men.

“They’re neutral beasties!” a grizzled old hume scolded her as the knights grimly hacked up the monsters, standing protectively over their wounded comrades. “What did you want to go and provoke them for?”

“What are they?” she asked, jolted awake as though she’d missed a charge technick. There was an awful lot of blood turning the water pink.

“Ichthons,” the man said. He brushed at a few sweaty gray hairs that had escaped his turban. His soggy, patched harem trousers clung to his legs, though his sash was splendid, woven of sumptuous silks and hung with beads and tassels – he looked less like a regular and more like a denizen of Lowtown, dirty and poor and proud of it. “Where are you from, girl, that you don’t know that?”

“Nabudis,” she said.

That shut him up. Abashed, the Lowtown lurker moved away from her, helping to distribute potions to the wounded.

Captain Azelas must have been standing right behind her. He appeared silently at her shoulder, an impressive feat for a man encased in armor. He studied her pale-skinned Nabradian face, lily-blonde hair, and leaf-green eyes, and then her katana, dripping with the ichors of beasts.

“A kotetsu. A suitable blade for a woman. You’ve some skill with it,” he said, but to Daina’s infinite relief, he didn’t sound condescending, only curious.

“My father is – was – Sir Bertrand Praeities, a Knight of House Nabradia. It was he who taught me,” she said. It hurt to talk of her father, so she busied herself with cleaning off the kotetsu and sheathing it. Three tassels hung from the sheath, two green for King Raminas and Lady Ashe, and one yellow, for Lord Rasler. The yellow tassel set her apart among the Knights of the Order. It was a mark of her honor, for King Rasler had wished her to defend his lady.

A lady who seemed to hate her existence.

Tears stung her eyes. Never in her life had she felt so unwanted and out of place. Back home in Nabudis, the boys may have teased her, but they accepted her. Like them, she was a Knight of House Nabradia.

So why, here in Rabanastre, did she feel lower than a scullion?

Daina gazed around at Amalia’s ragtag Resistance, soldiers and citizens both, all Dalmascan. There was no one left to resist Emperor Gramis but Dalmascans in the center and Rozarrians in the west, though Rozarria never acknowledged the rustic desert kingdom caught in the middle.

“I knew Bertrand.” Azelas sounded surprised. “Forgive me, but you don’t look much like him. Except for your eyes.”

She said nothing because he didn’t seem to expect a response. She had not met Captain Azelas before this night, but she knew of him. He was the same age as her father and a legendary knight.

Basch fon Ronsenburg had been legendary also. Now, the kingslayer’s betrayal was epic.

Azelas cocked his head. “You are the one brought to serve Amalia.”

“Yes.”

“Nabudis’s ill fate does not seem to be your own. Tell me, Praeities, with whom does your allegiance lie?”

“I belong to Dalmasca,” she said instantly, but the question confused her. Of course she belonged to Dalmasca. Even before an Archadian judge magister had led the assault against her home and wiped it clean of all humes, she had sworn her vows and joined Prince Rasler in Rabanastre.

“I see.” Azelas slung the greatsword over his shoulder, slipping it into its waiting harness. “Come with me.”

Puzzled, she fell into a march behind him. As far as women went, she was taller than average and could keep pace with him easily. Her feet squished through the murky water. The pretty green coat, damp and bedraggled, slapped at her ankles, but she made no complaints. She wouldn’t be wet forever. They planned to exit the city into the vast Westersand. There, they could creep beneath the Empire’s radar, lost to the sandstorms but still able to gather news by way of the travelers that sought shelter with the nomads and their itinerant camps. The merciless sun of the desert would more than make up for her discomfort now.

Resistance members looked up as they passed. Captain Azelas was their leader, a familiar, comforting presence, but Daina was something new. For every man that scowled disapprovingly at her, one smiled in a hopeful way. Her cheeks grew warm. She kept her eyes on the captain. At sixteen, she was not in the habit of seeking company in the way those shy, admiring smiles invited, though she wondered what would happen if she did.

Daina nursed a secret passion for Rozarrian romance novels, which her mother would probably have cultivated if Daina had ever built up the courage to confess. Rozarrian authors told tales of a knight sweeping a maid off her feet. The lady knight figured that her destiny lay in some penniless nomad boy, to be dazzled by her courtesy and strong sword arm, kept in domestic comfort by the spoils of war she brought home for him.

Daina sighed, suddenly depressed. Sewers had never featured in her daydreams. The Waterway hardly qualified as romantic, and she was about as poor as they came.

“I’ve brought her, my lady,” Azelas said, jerking Daina out of her thoughts.

Amalia stood on a shelf above the water, holding hushed council with five of her men. She looked up.

Gray eyes met green. Amalia’s narrowed. And not in a good way.

“What do you mean by this, Vossler?” she asked in her imperious, low-pitched voice. She crossed her arms over her stomach, her hands cupping her elbows.

Because her lady was facing her, Daina swiftly knelt. Captain Azelas didn’t say anything, but Daina heard Amalia’s annoyed release of breath.

Then the ex-princess said, “Leave us.”

After the other men had left, Amalia turned again to Azelas and said in a weary way, “Well?”

“I would like her to remain by your side at all times,” he said in his quick, no-nonsense way. “She can see to your needs better than my men can.”

“I do not wish it,” Amalia said flatly.

From under her hair, Daina watched Amalia’s feet march away, heard the rap of her boots against brick. Daina’s hands curled into fists.

“I alone will keep Your Majesty safe, if that is what you wish,” Azelas said, his voice loud in the confined space.

It sounded like a threat. Daina goggled at her fists. Did he dare speak to Amalia in such an angry tone? Did he dare to disagree with her to her face? He was asking for a demotion!

Amalia’s boots hesitated. Turned.

“Vossler,” she breathed. Then, more crisply, she said, “Very well. I will do as you ask.”

Daina raised her eyebrows, impressed. Was this what it meant to serve royalty, to know when to push the boundaries of their assumptions and arrogance? She could learn a thing or two from the captain, if he could convince Amalia to change her mind.

“We move!” Like his speech, Captain Azelas’s movements were sparse, wasting no energy.

Daina waited until Amalia, following him, passed her. She took her proper place behind her lady, a lethal shadow, gratitude for Azelas’s intervention warm in her chest.

The warmth carried her through the labyrinthine waterway. They emerged in the fifth storehouse of Rabanastre’s Lowtown. Someone closed the gate to the waterway and locked it, and they moved into the warren of Lowtown proper. The alleyways closed around them, full of foul, stale, unventilated air. The ceiling pressed down on them, damp and dingy, its shadowy expanse unbroken by streetlights. Handheld phosphor lamps flared up and down their line. Fortunately, the threat of occupation kept most of Lowtown’s inhabitants behind closed doors that night.

A Rabanastre hume introduced to Daina as Balzac met them at the egress to the city above, his harem trousers the same sky blue as his turban, his sandals well-worn and molded to his feet. Here, the numbers of the Resistance swelled with more than humes: A quartet of moogles, furry, cherub-cheeked creatures the height of hume children with nimble paws and vestigial bat wings poking from the backs of their trim little jackets, offered Captain Azelas their mechanical services. Each one wore a cap, fitted snugly between erect, rounded ears, that sprouted a different-colored pompon on a single antenna. A pair of thickset seeqs snorted and grunted out a few words in their native language that Daina didn’t understand and then hunkered down at the end of the procession, looking vaguely like tusked, multicolored pigs wallowing in a sty. And a handful of proud, shirtless bangaa in harem trousers and sashes came forward. They balanced crates and chests of supplies on their muscular shoulders. Some wore blindfolds over their tiny reptilian eyes, a fashion statement adopted only by the boldest of their kind. Thus fortified, the Resistance snuck out of the royal city through the gargantuan Westgate.

Not a moment too soon. Daina heard the telltale hum of Imperial air cutter remoras and looked up as a wave of the two-man crew, spinning top-shaped hovercraft whooshed by overhead, their whirring glossair rings glowing with eldritch blue light. The remoras headed unhurriedly for the aerodrome. Dalmasca’s independence vanished in their wake.

“They have no reason to search for us,” Captain Azelas said from the darkness ahead, stilling the nervous whispers that sounded like a herd of chocobos rustling their feathers. “We have the advantage. When the time is right, we will give them reason, but not tonight. Tonight, we move on.”

Move on they did. Weariness dragged at Daina by the time the sun reached its zenith. Her head ached from the constant glare, her ankles ached from carrying her through the burning sands that dissolved beneath her feet, and her heart ached as hour upon hour passed without conversation. Memories of her lost home and parents gnawed at it.

She began to sing to herself. Softly at first, ballads of which her mother had been fond. As she continued to cut down red wolves and fat, feathered cockatrices, her voice gained confidence, and she sang battle hymns that suited the exercise. The men of the Resistance took heart from the lone voice that drifted courageously over them. They marched with renewed purpose and strength, in turn sweeping Daina along with them.

Daina jumped from song to song, choosing without thought. She broke off when Amalia abruptly stopped walking and stared at her, her face blank with shock.

Captain Azelas came to a questioning halt when he noticed Amalia was no longer at his side.

Daina dropped to her knee. She should never stand in front of Amalia. She should never speak unless spoken to. Her cheeks burned with more than sun-heat.

After a thought-filled pause, Azelas called a break. The column of marchers broke up in relief, pooling among the boulders and spindly trees to soak in the precious shade.

Azelas strode up to Daina and offered her a canteen, thrusting it low into her line of vision. She took it and drank, grateful for water to water ease the wasteland of her throat.

When Azelas spoke, his voice was regretful. “Soon enough, Ivalice will forget the sound of a Nabradian hymn. We welcome your songs, Praeities.”

Unmindful of Azelas’s courtesy, Daina clenched her fingers on the canteen, spilling some of the precious water. _Not as long as I live,_ she thought fiercely. _Archadia can’t take my heritage from me!_

Someone called for the captain, and he left the two young women alone. The bustle of the men didn’t touch them where Amalia stood and Daina knelt, unmoving. Daina watched the spilled water sink into the sand, counting down from one hundred while she waited for orders from her lady. She reached zero, and still, Amalia did not move. Daina studied a wasp buzzing tiredly around the white and pink blossoms of a scrawny desert tree. She didn’t know the tree’s name and wondered if anyone else did. The wasp lit and then simply hung there. The flower nodded in the heat.

“Rasler used to sing that song,” Amalia said.

Startled, Daina looked up. The ex-princess stood in the sunlight, close enough to touch. With a prickle of guilt, Daina remembered that Amalia was only a year older than she was.

“The things you do,” Amalia went sadly on, “the way you speak. You remind me of him. And I . . . I don’t want the reminder.”

Amalia sat down. Not as if she meant to, but rather as if her legs had turned to flan. The mythril sword landed with a puff in the sand. She put her face in her hands.

At last, the arrogant princess was crying. Her slender frame shook with quiet sobs.

Daina felt her own grief well up. Then it receded, and compassion took its place. Who was Daina Praeities to judge a future queen, to whom appearance was everything? Without her façade of granite, Amalia’s people would have no confidence in her. Since her throne had been stolen from her, she had precious little except her people’s goodwill. Without that, she was no more than a usurper, grasping for power that was no longer rightfully hers.

Daina shifted her body, kneeling in a way that would hide the weeping Amalia from the Resistance. It was a start. For now, she would do what she could. Perhaps someday, she could prove her worth to her lady.


	2. Interlude, part one

"Fear of the Rozarrian Empire sending aid to Nabradia was the reason for Emperor Gramis’s attack on the city of Nabudis,” Daina said. “My vote does not lie with involving them.”

The domed lodge tent belonged to Dantro and his wife, a pair of nomads in the Estersand’s South Bank Village on the Nebra River. A voiceless silence ebbed through the village, its inhabitants still sleeping in their round stone homes. Inside the tent, Amalia sat on a cushion at a low table. Captain Vossler Azelas and Daina Praeities stood before her. Other high-ranking Resistance members knelt or sat scattered around the rest of the tent. Sunshine turned the white canvas walls to gold, making everything inside seem coated with a thin film of honey.

Amalia regarded the communiqué.

“The Empire is aware of us,” began Balzac.

“As they could not help but be,” Vossler put in, a wry smile pulling at his thin lips, “since we have scarce given them a chance to breathe these two years past. We have severed communication lines throughout Dalmasca and supply routes at every turn, freeing the villages.”

“This isn’t an isolated village,” Balzac said stubbornly. “We’re talking about liberating the royal city. Why can’t we request help from the Rozarrian Empire? They have cause to hate the Archadian Empire as we do.”

“But not necessarily love for Dalmasca,” Daina said, her impatience growing. “If we allow them within our borders to drive away House Solidor’s grasping vines, what happens after? They clip the bloom of Vayne Solidor, and then Rozarria goes home empty-handed but for our heartfelt thanks? Use your head. We do this not for the present, but for the future.”

“Get your own head together,” he retorted. “Methinks it resides too much in the past.”

They glared at each other. Balzac’s pleasant, rosy-tanned face screwed up in challenge. Would he never change? Once, Balzac had wooed her, the poor Dalmascan boy she had prophesied for herself, but some of his side dealings had left her with an uneasy guilt that ate at her insides. Wartime did strange things to the innocents caught up in it. He thieved without conscience, he believed the ends justified the means, and worst of all, he reveled in violence – his best friend was a fire-red bangaa, after all. His and Daina’s brief romance had downgraded quickly from love notes to heated arguments, and neither one had yet called a cease fire.

But . . . Maybe he was right. Perhaps the scars of the past acted like milky cataracts, corrupting her vision. Daina crossed her arms and began pacing in front of the table, her boots making no noise on the threadbare rugs layered so thickly that not a grain of sand made it through to the top.

Two years past, the late king of Nabradia, Nazewell, fearing the military might of the Archadian Empire, had signed a treaty with the large city-state in the west, Rozarria, to place Rozarrian troops in the tree-roads of the Salikawood. The Salikawood abutted Phon Coast, which in turn formed the border between Nabradia and Archadia. Emperor Gramis had not liked this covert display of power and had exerted political pressure on his small neighbor to remove the foreign soldiers. King Nazewell did not accede to his demands. Gramis and his Senate had not liked that, either. Thus, the Empire had invaded, and several days later a Mist explosion had razed the Nabradian royal city of Nabudis.

Had her father died fighting, or had the Mist stolen him away unawares? Daina shut her eyes and lowered her head, allowing her hair to hide her face. At her silence, Vossler took the floor. He seemed, like always, impervious to their bickering. He crossed his arms more in thought than in anger.

“It has been a full two years. The time to strike is now. I, too, vote for stealth over force. Vayne Solidor’s vanity puts him at risk.” He gestured at the communiqué while Amalia laced her fingers, rested her elbows on the table, and hid her mouth behind her hands. “Tonight, after Vayne takes up the office of consul-governor in Rabanastre, he plans to hold a fete at the palace. We go to –”

“Crash the party,” Balzac said with relish.

“– infiltrate the palace,” Vossler finished with a frown that made Balzac scratch the back of his turban sheepishly, “and assassinate the consul.”

“But Rozarria –”

“Balzac.” Daina looked him in the eye. “This operation’s secrecy is of utmost importance. We do not have time to request aid. We take a small force to the palace, and once there, we strike. As quick as a wildsnake bite. Tonight. During the fete. _While their guard is down._ We will get no other opportunity.”

“But –”

“I must reclaim my throne,” Amalia said. Everyone in the tent snapped to attention. She looked up, her pale eyes burnished in the light. “Once I have reinstated myself as queen, I can declare Dalmasca’s independence. After, there will be time to request aid, should we require it. We must focus on dislodging Vayne Solidor from Rabanastre. He is a great warlord, the best Archadia has to offer. His threat is paramount. At a word from their Senate, he assassinated his two elder brothers for opposing the emperor. He cannot be allowed to stay.”

“Agreed?” Vossler asked as if anyone would dare disagree with Amalia.

“Agreed!” shouted the renegade war council.

“Our next step, then, is to decide who goes and who stays,” Daina said.

Vossler nodded and began barking out assignments.

* * *

Amalia’s task force gathered outside of Rabanastre’s Westgate, the same gate from which she had fled two years earlier. Six squads slipped into the city during the consul’s inaugural speech, since it seemed most of the population had abandoned their homes and stores to hear it and they could blend in with the crowd. Lowtown had been locked down, but with a few slit throats and Resistance soldiers in the Empire’s armor, they gained access to the Garamsythe Waterway without incident.

Daina looked around, sword in hand, as she followed Vossler along a now-familiar route toward the northern sluiceway. She caught Amalia’s eye. The two young women smiled at each other, partly a grin of friendship and partly a grimace of determination.

Daina regretted ever feeling dislike toward Amalia. True, Amalia was still haughty and arrogant, lacking a discernible sense of humor, but she had grown into herself. At nineteen, she was an assured, intelligent, charismatic, and straightforward woman. And an alluring one at that, in her red boots with the tops rolled down, golden greaves that clasped shapely thighs, and the microscopic, hot pink skirt that made Daina’s linen shorts seem modest. Daina grinned to herself. Would the emperor’s son enjoy death dealt by such beauty?

She and Amalia had grown used to each other, more than knight-servant and princess now. In two years, Daina’s professional relationship with Vossler had improved also. Together, they three held confidences not shared with the rest of the Resistance. She and Vossler had kept Amalia safely hidden through her indefinite exile, trusting no one but each other. Their long fight was finally coming to an end.

Tonight, the Resistance would take back Dalmasca.

Vossler halted around a corner. Daina sank into a waiting crouch behind him, shielding her lady. Then Vossler relaxed.

An unseen soldier with a plain Dalmascan accent said, “Squads three through six are in place. They stand ready. So far the Imperials haven’t noticed a thing.”

“Then go now and hurry the others,” Vossler said. “By nightfall, we must ensure all our men are in place.”

* * *

The fete opened the palace to the sweltering Dalmascan night. The assembly glittered in its ceremonial armor and jewels. Flowers and perfume scented the air. Champagne flowed as freely as the water in the fountains. Couples waltzed to the impassioned strains of an orchestra. The dancers reminded Daina of the beautiful and neutral ichthons of the sewers, Dalmascans and Archadians alike hiding their tusks behind their smiles. It would only take one sword swing to end this false peace, for the assembly to leap into violent action that would purge the palace of all Imperials. Two years’ exile was going to work in the Resistance’s favor. It had given Dalmasca’s ministry time to learn hate for their new overlords.

There he was. Vayne Carudas Solidor, the eldest living son of Emperor Gramis Gana Solidor, and the newly appointed consul-governor of Dalmasca. He stood on one of the many balconies overlooking the garden stairs, smiling – somewhat unsuccessfully, Daina thought, for his eyes remained as cold and as sharp as those of a vulture. He bowed to the ladies introduced to him, shook the hands of the men. His dark, wavy fall of hair blended with the night sky. He wore armor green as wyrmscale, the gold trappings fashioned all over in a style like steeling’s wings. Daina crept forward with Amalia at her side, Vossler and several Resistance soldiers mimicking them from the opposite end of the room, closing the jaws of their coup d’état on the unsuspecting consul.

Vayne, clasping his white-gloved hands behind his back, looked over the balcony railing. This time, his smile was sincere. And cruel.

Shouts exploded from the garden stairs, metal clashing, feet pounding: The sounds of fighting where two squads of the Resistance had taken up watch. Vayne turned his back on the night, his gaze sweeping the ballroom.

His eyes picked out Daina, and Amalia next to her. Daina felt a shock as tangible as a blast of thundaga magick.

Because he knew. Daina could see it on his face. Vayne _knew._

A gun, she thought wildly. Why didn’t she have a gun, or a crossbow? _Someone, please, shoot him now!_

Vayne’s right hand rose.

Daina hurled herself backward, colliding with Amalia and nearly impaling herself on her lady’s drawn sword. Both women crashed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Amalia swore, pinned beneath the taller Daina. Bullets embedded themselves in the wall above their heads, and the marble burst outward in a shower of flakes and dust. A tremendous boom that made Daina’s ears hurt rode in on a fiery wave, knocking most of the dancers flat.

The blast from the sky set the gardens on fire. The night morphed from quiet blue-black to a hellish orange.

Daina scrambled to her feet, just in time to meet the downward slash of an enemy sword. She parried it and thrust her kotetsu between the chinks of the Imperial’s plate armor. As he gurgled behind his helm, sagging over her blade, she looked frantically around for Amalia. She saw Amalia fending off two Imperial swordsmen, her escutcheon on her arm. She also saw the Imperial airship – the _Ifrit_ – making short work of their comrades outside. The protective paling, an impenetrable barrier of Mist that the royal magi sustained around the palace at all times, didn’t seem to be active. Of Vossler, she saw nothing.

Despair turned into the berserker high of battle. Amalia. She must protect Amalia.

Daina yanked her kotetsu out of the dying swordsman and kicked him to the floor. She slew one of the Imperials harassing her lady, while Amalia dropped the other, but more flooded out of the walls, or so it seemed. If Daina and the princess didn’t move, now, they would be surrounded and either killed or captured.

“Retreat!” she shrieked, just in case any of their friends remained alive to follow the order.

“We can still do this!” Amalia shouted. Her elegant features twisted with fierce disappointment as their assassination attempt disintegrated around them.

“It’s no use!” Daina said. Both women ducked from incoming attacks. “It was a trap, my lady. We must flee!”

After a few minutes of frenzied fighting, Amalia gave in. With Daina and a trio of bleeding Resistance soldiers flanking her, she cut a path through their enemies, back the way they had come. The waterway – they would lose their pursuers in the waterway. It had, after all, sheltered them twice before, and three times lucky . . .

As soon as the soldiers cleared the route, the five of them raced down the palace corridors. They lost one man to an Imperial marksman along the way, but they did not slow. They could not.

Daina’s breath whistled through her teeth. She fancied she could feel snipers draw beads between her shoulder blades. Amalia seemed driven by something deep in her core. It was she who set the pace as they clattered down the damp steps into the Garamsythe Waterway. At the bottom, they splashed into cold, green water.

The crack of a gunshot echoed off the wet brick; a second Resistance soldier collapsed, dead.

“No!” Amalia screamed.

Daina shoved her. Amalia stumbled out of the line of fire.

“Go!” Daina said, brandishing her kotetsu. “Go, we’ll hold them here!”

Amalia’s expression scared her. Tears filled Daina’s eyes. To send her lady away, when they hadn’t been apart for two years, could very well be the death of her. “You must survive!” she cried. “Please!”

A second gunshot took their last man. Amalia and Daina stared at his half-submerged corpse, and then Amalia’s lips tightened. She ran.

Tears streaking down her face, Daina grasped her kotetsu in both hands and charged up the stairs, removing the marksman’s head from his shoulders in a clean sweep. Below, Amalia vanished in the gloom. Daina kept going. She returned to the palace, where her ferocity drew all pursuit after her. Her supply of potions dwindled until there were none left. She hoped she’d discover Vossler somewhere, for his aid and salvation. Truthfully, she’d have been ecstatic to find any friendly face, even Balzac’s, and he was no proper soldier.

The only friends she encountered were already dead, however.

Amalia herself had said it: _He is a great warlord, the best Archadia has to offer._

Vayne had baited his trap well.

* * *

Running water, rushing across brick. A cauldron’s bubble of noise, as of waterfalls. Somewhere close. Daina headed for that, following her ears.

She blinked to clear her eyes, but it did no good. Her vision remained stubbornly tinged with red, turning the slimy tunnels and verdigrised gates of the waterway foggy and indistinct. More than once, she walked headlong into something solid.

_I’m dying,_ she thought. She felt oddly calm about it. It was a fact. As was the fact that she was alone, with no way to restore her health. The red burgeoned, stealing across her eyes, but death had not yet claimed her. She held her hope close to her heart and her kotetsu in her hand, and she staggered onward. The squeaks of rats and steelings kept the kotetsu seeking their furry, fetid bodies, though her red-misted vision made aiming difficult and she missed a lot. She took care to boot their carcasses into the water to avoid leaving a trail.

Each time she heard Imperials approaching, she wedged herself in tight, dark spaces, or crouched in ankle-deep water. The patrols searched for the dregs of the Resistance. For her. Dying or not, she could not afford capture. Amalia must be alive, and free, else Vayne would not have his hounds hunting so arduously through the sewers. Heartened by this thought, she continued on her way.

When she passed a pair of serene ichthons plying through the humid air, she paused, eyeing them suspiciously. Hadn’t she passed these monstrous flying fish before? At least they left her alone, unlike the bothersome dire rats underfoot, or the steelings that swooped distractingly around her head. She slumped against a wall. The constant noise of water, dripping slipping slapping crashing, reverberated in her throbbing head. Hope drained from her like her strength. She was going in circles. She could neither find her way to Lowtown nor find her lady. Vossler, she never expected to see again. He had been on the wrong end of the ballroom, too far from the safety of the waterway, too close to Vayne’s fangs.

Balzac. That crafty Lowtown lurker possessed the brains to get the survivors to safety, to take up their roles as obedient citizens of the Empire. As soon as the _Ifrit_ opened fire, he would have acted.

Amalia. How could she have sent the princess out alone?

What kind of knight was she?

Dimly, Daina realized her thoughts were wandering, disconnected and incoherent. She blinked again, rubbing her eyes. The red was laced with black now. Or was it white? She rubbed harder.

The fog seemed to have gained a life of its own. Like something real, rather than a trick of her dying mind. It thickened like steam from a boiler, rolling over the surface of the water in billowing clouds.

It was hot like steam.

She’d reached the overflow cloaca and the exit to the waterway. Wheezing, she stumbled into the long, rectangular room. The gate clanged shut behind her. Across the cloaca, another gate burst open and several sets of feet stampeded through it. Vague shapes bloomed against the fog. Two humes, a man and boy. Someone much taller – a woman. Her head seemed to reach the ceiling, grotesquely elongated. Swaying, Daina brought the kotetsu to bear.

A third hume, a woman in white, gold, and hot pink.

The kotetsu clattered to the bricks, slipping from nerveless fingers.

Amalia.

Daina must have spoken her longing aloud because the freakishly tall woman and the boy both looked her way, their faces indistinct, their postures startled. Amalia made a sound of relief – and then shouted a warning.

The Mist erupted, for that was what the strange fog was: Concentrated magickal power and superheated water. A fireball charged into the cloaca and burst open to reveal an equine of flame and fury.

One kick from the Mist-beast was all it took, and Daina fell.

* * *

“Stand where you are!”

A tuft of phoenix down crumbled into ash on her lips. Surprised, Daina opened her eyes and found herself supported in the lap a beautiful woman. The strangely elongated woman, Daina realized. She was not malformed because she wasn’t a hume. No wonder she had seemed so tall – she was one of the cloistered races, a viera. Large, leporine ears grew from her wavy silver hair. Daina felt her claw-hard nails as the viera helped her stand.

Feeling sick, Daina looked around. The fiery equine was gone, either killed or fled, but row upon row of Imperial marksmen surrounded their little band from the walkways above the cloaca, crossbows trained on them in dizzying uniformity.

The man who had spoken came forward into the light. Vulture eyes and cold smile. Vayne.

Fury radiated off Amalia. She started forward, but the hume man grabbed her arm.

“Now is not the time,” he said in a pleasantly deep voice, burred with an Archadian accent. He wore a noble’s fashionable clothes, though his skin was uncharacteristically sun-kissed; everything about him seemed fantastically out of place in the dank sewer.

Who was he, and why was he here? Daina, horrified that anyone should touch the princess without permission, started forward also, but the viera stopped her with a meaningful look. Amalia quivered where she stood, glaring with all of her righteous hatred at Vayne. She seemed to have completely forgotten about Daina’s existence. Daina, disoriented after her raising, deflated.

Eighteen years old and once dead. Weaponless. Captured. Ultimately of no use. Self-loathing squirmed through Daina’s insides.

The soldiers flooded into the cloaca, disarming and cuffing them all: The sensual viera, the handsome hume man, the teenage boy, elegant Amalia, and mute Daina, and then forced them up the steps into Lowtown. From there, they marched their prisoners through the underground city and then up, into the blinding light of morning outside. Palms swayed in the baking heat, brilliant green against the impossibly blue sky. Daina searched the crowds from behind her curtain of hair, but she saw no one she knew. Middle-class Rabanastrans, sharing their neighborhoods with Archadian occupiers, were not part of the Resistance. They spoke amongst themselves as the soldiers ushered her past.

“They’re the thieves who stole into the palace.”

“Is that what the commotion last night was about?”

Accusing eyes. Unveiled curiosity. Superior smirks.

“They think me some common thief,” Amalia said in disgust.

The Archadian man raised an eyebrow at her. “Better than a common assassin.”

Daina frowned at him. How much did this stranger know?

An Imperial shoved Amalia in the back to keep her moving.

Like a spring wound too tightly, she whipped around and snapped at him, “These people have done nothing. Release them.”

Not once did her gray eyes turn to Daina. It was as if they were strangers.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked Amalia.

“Don’t interrupt me. I’m thinking.” Amalia didn’t look at him, either.

Vayne did, though, with an expression like an akademician examining a dissected worm as he walked by. The boy was Dalmascan, judging by his short, messy blond hair, rosy-tan skin, and loose trousers cinched with a red sash. He wore no shirt but kept himself decent with a short vest. He also wore silver and gold greaves and mailed gloves. A hunter? Daina wondered. Young for such an occupation.

The residents of Rabanastre fell back before the consul with awe and respect. Amalia followed him without prompting, her shoulders tight and her head high.

Daina said nothing. Amalia’s attitude suggested that her service to Dalmasca had come to an end. She had failed.

* * *

“Wait!” screamed a girl from the crowd.

The Imperials standing guard between the prisoners and the onlookers held out their arms to detain the girl. She threw her small, compact body forward, straining to get by. At any moment, Daina expected, she was going to burst into hysterical tears. “He didn’t know what he was doing! You have to let him go! You have to!”

“Penelo!” The boy smiled sadly, waving his cuffed hands. “Sorry. That dinner’ll have to wait.”

The blonde girl shook her head miserably. “I told you!”

“That’s enough!” one of the soldiers barked. He punched the boy in the back of the head with a metal-clad fist.

Fury spurred Daina into action. How she hated the mindless drudges of the Empire, drunk on the little power their uniforms afforded! She dropped to one knee beneath the dazed boy and managed to keep him from sprawling across the hot cobblestones. In her peripheral vision, she saw Penelo break through the soldiers.

“Leave him alone!” Penelo cried, darting into the mix.

As smoothly as a seasoned dancer entering the set, the handsome hume stepped forward and offered a handkerchief to the wild girl. He looked comfortable in his handcuffs.

“Hold onto this for me, would you?” he said conversationally. He cocked his head, flashing Penelo a crooked smile. “Just until I bring Vaan back.”

Confused, Penelo accepted the token, but the anxiety didn’t leave her face. She wore a leather jumpsuit with a high collar and short legs, black and tan. Lace peeped out of the sleeves and collar. Knee-high leather boots engulfed her feet and ankles. She seemed clean and well cared-for, unlike many Dalmascan children. She backed away, clutching the scrap of silk.

“On your feet!” the offending Imperial snarled. He grabbed the unresponsive Vaan by the scruff of the neck. Daina did her best to prop him up until the subsequent jostling knocked them apart. The soldier then pointed at the cuffed Archadian noble. “You, over here!”

The nameless man shrugged. “All right, all right. Edgy, aren’t we?”

He sauntered where the soldier directed him, the viera woman close to him, her eyes seeing everything, her ears hearing all, her thoughts a mystery.

When Daina attempted to follow Amalia, however, the soldiers prevented her. A scuffle ensued. Panicked, Daina called after Amalia, but her lady never turned around. The Imperials hustled the ex-princess into one ship, while they herded Daina and the others into another. Daina contemplated bulldozing her way through, as Penelo had done, but one glimpse of Amalia’s stony face dissuaded her.

During all this, Vaan lost consciousness. The soldiers manhandled him into the ship, leaving him heaped on the floor of a holding cell. The hume and the viera didn’t seem particularly fussed about this poor treatment of their comrade. Odd.

Daina waited until the door closed before rounding on the hume. “Who are you?”

“Oh, she speaks,” he said in mock surprise, taking the seat across from her and resting his cuffed hands in his lap. “I was beginning to think you were naught but a wallflower.”

“Funny.” Unsmiling, she looked him up and down. He smirked, allowing her scrutiny. Honey-brown hair, short and spiky and sun-bleached, heavy masculine earrings in both ears. A silky white shirt that billowed out of a gold, black, and leaf-green waistcoat. He of the curious sideburns probably had to peel those black leather trousers off at night. Colorful rings adorned several fingers.

He was as flamboyant as the viera, who wore tailored black armor that left little of her dusky brown skin to the imagination. The only spot of color in her outfit came from her short sleeves, red piping that zigzagged around her slender arms. A bit of gauze and lace flowed down her flat tummy. Like all viera, she wore strappy shoes with six-inch stiletto heels, the better to fit her large feet. Her toes were those of an animal, clawed and numbering only three.

The viera rested her cuffed, overlong arms in her lap. Her small mouth closed in the perfect, pursed bow of a newborn, and silver lashes veiled her reddish eyes.

The hume bowed from his seat. “Balthier, at your service, Insurgent. This is Fran. You are – let me guess. Someone’s poor relation?”

“Daina. And him?” Daina indicated the comatose Vaan.

“A thief with bad timing.”

“Are you sure that isn’t your story? I never thought to see sky pirates in the sewers,” she said.

His suddenly wary expression told her she had somehow or other gotten close to the truth. She sat back, savoring this one small victory.

“She sees to the heart of things,” Fran said archly, earning herself a grimace from her partner. At least, that was what it sounded like she’d said. The viera’s words were thick and unfamiliarly accented, the cadence unpredictable.

Fran said nothing else, however, and Balthier turned away, pouting. Daina, sick with worry, tried to get comfortable.

With a hum and a rumble, the room tilted; the ship had launched. Fran lifted her head as if scenting the air. “Where do they take us?”

Daina knew much of the workings of the Archadian army, and she answered, “Nalbina.” She frowned, thinking hard.

At Nalbina Town, King Rasler had lost his life, and, later, Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg slew King Raminas and handed Dalmasca over to the Archadian Empire. A terrible place, Nalbina, one she had no desire to visit. Plus, if Vayne suspected Amalia’s true identity, he would not take her lady there, but to Archades, the capital city of Archadia, to his father and the Senate. Daina had to rescue Amalia, whether Amalia wanted her help or not.

A wry smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. Déjà vu.

“Nalbina? You can’t be serious. It’s not even a proper dungeon. They just sealed off the bottom level of the fortress,” Balthier scoffed. He sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. “I suggest we get some rest. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

Daina wished she could relax like him. She kept glancing at Vaan, lying so still on the floor. At least he hadn’t started vomiting, so she was reasonably sure he wasn’t concussed. She shook her own head, and then wished she hadn’t when the ache in her skull flared. Although the tuft of phoenix down had revived her, it hadn’t healed all of her wounds; she felt disoriented and sick.

The Empire planned to lock her in Nalbina, to bury her alive. She had to rescue Amalia. She couldn’t think. She rubbed her temple, pinched the bridge of her nose, and hoped she wasn’t going to get airsick. She needed allies. Maybe . . .

She studied the sky pirates through her fingers. It seemed they had a common enemy. Perhaps she could use their help.

After the Imperials had dropped their prisoners into their makeshift dungeon, sand-filled rooms and broken walls open to the blazing Dalmascan sun, with nothing but a single water pouch to share between them, Balthier liberated them from their handcuffs with a few clever twists of a lock pick and torsion wrench. Carefully, he laid Vaan in the shade of some rubble.

From deep within the dungeon, a scream rose in pitch until it became a wail. It tapered off, and a second, lower voice sought the chinks in the walls, ululating on one long, drawn-out lungful of scorched air. Daina grimaced. Down here criminals roamed, without cells to separate them. Down here, the rule was dominate or die. Die, as the bangaa half buried in the sand at her feet had done. They had water. Others would come looking for it.

The viera’s hand descended on Daina’s shoulder, and the rest of her injuries healed. Cure magick.

“Thank you,” Daina said.

“Come,” Fran said. “We will find our way out.”

“I’m counting on you,” Balthier said as he sat on a chunk of masonry, stretching out his long legs. He nodded at the prone, insensate Vaan. “He is too. Try not to keep us waiting, ladies, hmm?”

* * *

Two years after the battle that had claimed Rasler’s life and Dalmasca’s freedom, Archadia was still restoring the battlefield that Nalbina Town had become. The fortress was a ruin, though an aerodrome had been built into the one intact tower above. Daina followed the leggy viera deeper into the fortress’s underbelly, sometimes at a crisp walk, other times slowly. Fran put her long-fingered hand to the crumbling walls and lifted her head in that queer sniffing motion. Daina felt utterly useless. No kotetsu. No lady to protect. No idea how to get out. She brooded on these depressing facts, not paying attention to Fran’s activities, trying to understand how she had come to be here in the company of criminals.

Every story had two sides, wasn’t that it? Eventually, she found her voice. “Fran? What were you doing at the palace?”

“Sky pirates seek treasure,” Fran answered, amused. “We sought a stone, but another beat us to it. You sought something else, I think.”

“Yes.” Daina looked at her toes. “I found only heartache.”

“Our situations are much the same,” Fran said. She crouched, her eyes tracing something Daina couldn’t see along the ground. Then she stood, shaking back her long ponytail. “You can trust him.”

Daina frowned. “Trust who?”

Fran didn’t answer. She darted into a small, lightless room. While she did, Daina turned to face the growing crowd of curious fellow prisoners that had begun tailing them, humes and bangaas and seeqs, all beaten and gaunt. Under her cold stare, for she was fit, active, and healthy where they were not, they reluctantly dispersed. The hair of her arms prickled. Desperation drove the weak to unthinkable acts of survival. It would be naïve to a ridiculous degree not to expect an attack.

From the depths of the dark room, Fran made a sound of satisfaction.

“What is it?” Daina asked, peering into the dark.

“A solution and a problem.” Fran reappeared, striding briskly back the way they had come. Daina struggled to keep up. To her surprise, instead of returning to Balthier, Fran made an abrupt left turn and headed toward a pit in the center of the fortress. Sunlight flooded it, setting the sand aflame with yellow light. It appeared to form the base of one of the fallen battlement towers, caged ‘round with gates. Fran slowed, slinking along in the manner of a panther.

They reached the edge of the pit, and Fran put her hand on her hip. Daina peered around her. Vaan, his cheek bloodied, and Balthier were both trapped in the pit, backs to the gate, their eyes trained skyward. Three snout-nosed seeqs lay in puddles of drool, gently bleeding into the yellow sand. Daina winced. Whereas most of the prisoners wouldn’t stand a chance against a loud noise, the seeqs were twice as wide as she and Fran put together. She thanked Faram that she hadn’t run afoul of these particular porcine thugs. Balthier was clearly stronger than he looked.

“Great,” he muttered, acting as though the stinking sleeper at his feet wasn’t there. “They just don’t give up, do they? Now is looking like a good time for us to leave.”

As Fran coaxed the gate to soundlessly rise a foot or so off the ground, Daina looked up, expecting more bellicose seeqs. A swarthy green bangaa and several Imperial soldiers marched in instead, peering into the pit. Balthier and Vaan, pressed against the wall below them, were hidden from their view.

Fran wasted no time with pleasantries. “Through the oubliette,” she whispered, “there’s a way out. Only . . .”

“Only you sense the Mist.” Balthier didn’t look at her face to confirm his assumption. He propped his hands on his narrow hips. “Then we’ll need weapons.”

Above them, a soldier barked, “What did you call me? Say that again!”

“What, ye couldn’t hear?” sneered a heavily-accented voice: the green-skinned bangaa. His lower jaw was pierced, as were his four floppy ears, with hoops of black adamantine. “I merely said that the lot of ye are incompetent fools. If ye’ve the sky pirate in yer hands, where is he?”

“You’d have done better, Ba’Gamnan?” the soldier demanded. “By your own words, it was the Imperial army who caught this sky pirate of yours. We’ve done your job for you! We don’t require the assistance of filthy headhunters. The Empire will restore order here.”

“Eh?” The bangaa tilted his lizard-like, long-muzzled head, squinting blearily at the soldier. Bangaas had notoriously rotten eyesight, which was why some of them didn’t bother trying to use their eyes, choosing instead to wear decorative blindfolds. “What’s that ye say now? Maybe I’ll whet my blade on ye before I kill Balthier.”

Daina turned questioningly to Fran, whose silver eyebrows creased with worry. Quickly, Vaan and Balthier squeezed under the gate.

“That’s enough, Ba’Gamnan.” This voice sounded muffled and strangely metallic. Vaan and Daina leaned into the gate to get a better view of the speaker, a man clad head to foot in expensive plate armor. A black cape flowed from his shoulders. They couldn’t see his face behind his visored, curly-horned helm.

“A judge,” Fran said with distaste.

Daina’s heart contracted. An Archadian judge magister, like the one who had unleashed the Mist on Nabudis. Her enemy.

“Judge?” Vaan asked.

Balthier answered, with a _humph._ “The self-proclaimed guardians of law and order in Archadia. They’re the elite guard of House Solidor. Which effectively makes them the commanders of the Imperial army. If you ask me, they’re more executioners than judges. Not a friendly lot, at any rate. What are they doing here?” He pronounced the last bit in an undertone. He frowned through the bars of the gate.

“The emperor is willing to overlook race for his more talented servants,” the judge said, unaware of his larger audience. “However, those that do not show respect will receive none in kind.”

Ba’Gamnan interjected with, “Yer Honor,” but the judge spoke over him: “You travel freely through our lands because the Emperor wills it. Am I correct?”

“Bah!” Ba’Gamnan threw up his four-fingered, clawed hands and stepped aside.

The judge turned to the soldier, who saluted him. “Where is the captain?”

Daina gasped. The captain? Had Vossler been captured? Was it possible he was still alive?

“We have him in solitary, Your Honor. We’re ready to begin our interrogation.”

In a last attempt to bring the spotlight back to himself, Ba’Gamnan started to speak, but the judge dismissively said, “This does not concern you, bounty hunter.”

“He is in here somewhere! Find him!” Ba’Gamnan spat at three other bangaas. The four lizards disappeared, squabbling like children.

The judge and his entourage went the other way. Balthier cocked a dark eyebrow.

“Time for the hare to follow the fox,” he said.

“Huh?” Vaan muttered, and Daina felt a spear of sympathy. She didn’t understand anything going on, either. _Trust him,_ Fran had said. Trust who? Vaan, a clueless thief, or Balthier, who apparently had a bounty on his head?

Why had Daina ever let Amalia out of her sight?

“The magicks binding the door to the oubliette are quite strong,” Fran said to her partner. “Too strong even for my talents.”

“That’s why we’ll get them to open it for us.”

The pair moved off, leaving Daina to trot along in their wake.

Loudly, Vaan objected. “How is going deeper into this place –”

“What’s wrong?” Balthier asked over his shoulder. He came to a halt and crossed his arms. “You don’t trust her? Viera’s noses are sharp. If she says there’s a way out, there’s a way out.”

When Fran looked impassively at Vaan, the boy shyly lowered his eyes.

Balthier rolled his eyes. “There are more turnkeys than cutpurses down here. I’ve had my fill of chains. Let’s tread lightly, shall we?”

They tailed the judge and his soldiers through an unlocked door, which then slammed shut behind Daina, sealing them in. Due to her sharp nose, or simple powers of observation, Fran found the confiscatory where their weapons had been stashed – all but Daina’s kotetsu, which seemed to have been lost in the Garamsythe Waterway. Vaan outfitted himself with a sword; Fran a bow; Balthier a gun. Daina sifted through the spoils and found another katana, an osafune, in good condition. The osafune was two grips longer than her old kotetsu, but after a few practice swings, she decided it would do and buckled it around her waist.

Incongruously, the kotetsu’s empty sheath was there. Daina picked it up and removed one of the green tassels, the one for Lady Ashe, and attached it to the pommel of the osafune. With regret, she left Lord Rasler’s yellow tassel in the confiscatory, an offering to his spirit, may it rest in peace.

The quartet moved deeper into the dungeon, following the judge and his entourage. Heading, Daina noted, for the lightless room that held the dual mystery of Fran’s solution and problem.

* * *

The entrance to the oubliette. While Balthier, Fran, Daina, and Vaan hid in the inky shadows, two Imperial magi chanted out a complex spell in an arcane language. The magicks in the door responded, glowing white, blue, and violet, curling like vines. The paling flickered and died. The judge and his company strode through the unlocked door. So did Daina and the others, from a safe distance, slipping through before the paling refreshed itself and sealed them inside. The oubliette was blacker still, a chilly, forsaken place. None of the Imperials bothered to turn around, just as none of the other prisoners had followed them. Perhaps there had been demonstrations of potential escapees in the past.

A lamp flared, its yellow phosphor jumping into the pools of shadow, describing a much larger chamber than Daina had envisioned. It was positively cavernous. A second, then a third lamp gave off enough light to let them see. Daina stole a glance at Vaan.

“How did you end up here?” she whispered.

He screwed up his nose. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I don’t think any of us did,” she said, grinning. “What were you doing in the sewer with a pair of sky pirates?”

“In all honesty, it happened so fast that I’m not sure. See, Penelo told me it was like the Empire was swallowing Rabanastre whole. It isn’t the same city we used to know,” he said. He scuffed the floor with a shoe, sighed again, and continued. “I wanted to take back what’s ours. Give back to Dalmasca. I figured if I found something good in the palace, and it fetched a good price, I’d buy them all dinner.”

“Them?”

He gave her a clear, gray-eyed look. “The war orphans.”

“I see.” This was what she and Resistance were working so hard to undo: Children resorting to thievery to survive, children growing up without parents, Dalmasca forgetting its culture as the Empire took over. Vaan, in his clumsy simplicity, represented everything evil about Dalmasca’s defeat.

“Penelo must be worried sick.” Vaan tenderly scrubbed the back of his head and the cockatrice egg-sized lump sure to be there.

Daina remembered the frantic blonde girl begging for Vaan’s release. The one to whom Balthier had loaned his handkerchief. “Who is Penelo to you?”

“She’s a friend.” Vaan’s smile was warm. “After my parents died of the plague, hers took me in, but then they were killed in the war. Her brothers, too, and mine. They’re all gone. It’s been Penelo and me ever since.”

“Quiet back there,” Balthier admonished, and they fell silent.

The phosphor brightened to a more natural white. The judge’s entourage vanished down a set of steps. Daina crept forward to peer over the landing.

Below them, a crow’s cage hung from a thick chain above a pitch-black hole that seemed to go down forever. Inside the cage, arms chained above his head, a collar of metal that restricted all movement bruising bare shoulders, another such collar around his waist from which chains depended to secure his ankles, an untamed thatch of curling, wheat-gold hair and beard obscuring his face –

“You have grown very thin, Basch. Less than a shadow. Less than a man,” the judge said, removing his helm. All Daina could see was the back of his close-shorn head, also wheat-gold.

Vaan audibly gasped when the imprisoned man looked up, and so did Daina.

The prisoner was not Captain Vossler York Azelas, as she had first thought, but Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg. The traitor. The kingslayer. The one who was supposed to be two years dead.

“Sentenced to death and yet you live,” the judge went on, speaking Daina’s thought aloud. “Why?”

Like a trained hyena, Basch obediently spoke, his voice rough and tired and singsong. “To silence Ondore.” He bared his teeth. Spoke in a more normal, yet angry tone. “How many times must I say it?”

“Is that all?” The judge’s words could have rusted iron.

“Why not ask Vayne himself?” Basch paused to draw a breath, difficult because of the way his arms were chained, which put pressure on his ribcage in all the wrong places. “Is he not one of your masters?”

“We’ve caught a leader of the Insurgence,” the judge said casually as if Basch hadn’t spoken. “She is being brought from Rabanastre. The woman Amalia. Who could that be?”

Daina dug her fingers into the stone railing of the landing to keep from speaking. Basch seemed to spark at the mention of Amalia, but then the energy bled out of him. He lowered his head once more. The judge put his helm back in place.

“Such a faithful hound to cling so to a fallen kingdom,” he said contentedly.

Basch closed his eyes and mumbled, “Better than throwing it away.”

“Throwing it away?” the judge snarled, suddenly furious. “As you threw away our homeland?”

With that, the judge and his soldiers left by another route, leaving the traitor alone with his guilt once more. Daina, breathing as hard as if she’d run the entire distance from Rabanastre to Nalbina Town, her eyes locked on his bowed head, didn’t realize that the others had left her there on the landing. They approached the crow’s cage and the hole under it.

Fran’s stiletto heels struck stone, too regular for an accident, and Basch’s roughened voice called, “Who’s there?”

Ignoring him, Balthier put one foot on the ledge and peered into the chasm yawning below the cage. “This is the place?” he asked Fran.

“The Mist is flowing through this room,” Fran affirmed. “It must be going somewhere.”

“You!” For the first time, Basch showed real signs of life. He jerked against his bonds. “You’re no Imperials. Please, you must get me out –”

“It’s against my policy to speak with the dead,” Balthier interrupted, frowning. “Especially when they happen to be kingslayers.”

“I did not kill him,” Basch said unblinkingly.

Balthier’s sarcastic tone sharpened. “Is that so? Glad to hear it.”

“Please, get me out. For the sake of Dalmasca.”

At that, Vaan flew into a rage. Taking two tremendous strides, he sailed across the gap and clung to Basch’s cage the way a dive talon stuck to its prey.

“Dalmasca?” he bellowed, shaking the bars as if to tear them apart. Basch jounced, helpless, in his chains. “What do you care about Dalmasca? Everything that’s happened is because of you! Everyone that’s died, every single one!”

“Vaan!” Appalled, Daina dashed down the stairs and took the leap herself. The cage rocked wildly under their momentum. She tried to pry his hands loose. “Stop it!”

He seemed beyond hearing her, beyond reason. “Even my brother,” he raged, _“you killed my brother!”_

“Quiet!” Balthier hissed. “The guards will hear.”

Vaan paid him no heed, so Fran took action. “I’m dropping it,” she announced.

Balthier barely had time to duck out of the way as she, with a well-placed swing of one strong leg, threw a lever. The cage jolted sickeningly, shocking all words out of Vaan.

“Pirates without a sky,” Balthier lamented. Swiftly, he mimicked Fran’s jump across the gap to the cage. He braced Daina against the bars with his arms.

With a rattle that billowed into a chainsaw snarl, they plummeted.

* * *

“It’s not the fall I mind,” Daina muttered. She lay on her back while she waited for the universe to settle. “It’s the sudden stop at the end.”

“Are you all right?” Fran asked quietly.

Daina allowed Fran to help her sit up. She put a hand to her head. The colossal crash that had torn down a good section of their new surroundings resounded in her skull, making her eyes and her stomach roll. Some knight she was lately. Her father would be ashamed. So she lied. “Yes.”

The wreckage of the crow’s cage littered the floor of their landing place. Barheim Passage, if she remembered the land’s layout correctly. Once, its underground railways had been the main supply route into Nalbina, but had been largely abandoned at the onset of air travel. The Resistance had camped in its disused halls before.

Gloomy tunnel walls stretched in either direction, terminating in darkness. Basch, freed, rubbed bruised and bleeding wrists, his ribs showing clearly beneath his skin.

Vaan tackled the older man to the ground and raised his fist to strike, but Balthier snatched the collar of Vaan’s vest and flung him backward. Vaan tumbled onto his rear end, gaping at the sky pirate.

“Spare us your quiddities,” Balthier sighed.

“Yeah, but –” Vaan spluttered from the ground, “but he’s a –”

“A traitor, I know. Stay here and fight, if you want.” Balthier’s impatience showed in every taut line of his body. He turned to Basch, who was getting slowly, and painfully, to his bare feet. “If you can walk, let’s go.”

“You’re taking him with us?” Vaan sounded like he was choking on his own tongue.

Balthier raised an eyebrow. “We could use another sword arm.”

“And you have it,” Basch said.

His accent baffled Daina, a mixture of Dalmascan and something she couldn’t put her finger on at first. Basch fon Ronsenburg was not a native of Dalmasca. His homeland, the one the judge had accused him of throwing away, had been the small Republic of Landis, overtaken by the Empire sometime before her birth.

Fran’s words floated through her mind: _Our situations are much the same._

Basch’s gaze flicked over them, one by one, as if in thanks. He paused when he got to Daina. She averted her eyes. She wasn’t sure she liked Balthier’s decision to bring him, either, but . . . Seeing the former captain reduced to this skeletal figure distressed her. Vivid purple and red discolorations bloomed across his shoulders and waist, and the lurid streak of an untreated scar sliced through his left eyebrow. He’d been through much, this man, and they couldn’t abandon a fellow hume.

Did he know her? It had only been a few weeks between her arrival in Rabanastre and King Raminas’s assassination. A glint of silver caught her eye – a pendant shaped like a phoenix, strung up by its feet around his neck as if a cockatrice plucked and waiting for the broiler. A symbol of his supposed death?

Somebody sure had a warped sense of humor.

With discontented grumblings, they more or less moved as a group down a set of crumbling stairs. Vaan unearthed a bangaa merchant in the lightworks. The aged bangaa, crouched on the balls of his long, clawed feet and his short, reptilian tail, ruefully informed them that their dramatic arrival had blocked the only exit from the passage of which he knew. He sold them sundries and a jury-rigged fuse to get the lights turned on and then sent them on their way.

Daina and Vaan huddled together, both of them dirt-smudged and tired, weapons drawn. Many and varied were the beasties in Barheim, and they did not like intruders disrupting their underground home. The battery mimics were the worst – metallic spider-creatures big enough to carry off a mastiff and which fed on power conduits, making the journey a race against darkness. Daina wondered if they would ever find the way out or if they would die down there, becoming one with the legion of undead that lurked in the deepest black places.

“The Mist seethes,” Fran said presently.

“It reeks,” Balthier agreed. “Something’s close.”

Basch, who didn’t seem to be listening, espied a fallen soldier nearby. He picked up the man’s sword and swung it around. His brows pinched, and the practice swings gained control. Daina understood that expression all too well. She’d seen it on her father’s face, and felt it on her own, enough times. Once a knight, always a knight.

“Nice moves there, Captain,” Balthier drawled.

“You mean ‘traitor,’” Vaan spat.

Balthier leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “So they say. But I didn’t see him kill anyone.”

Vaan’s words fell like stones. “My brother did.”

At that, Basch froze in the act of buckling some of the more serviceable pieces of the corpse’s armor about his person. He stared at Vaan, who glowered back, his features clearly lit.

“Reks,” Basch said in recognition, seeing someone else in Vaan’s pugnacious face. His arms dropped limply. “He said he had a brother two years younger. I see. He meant you.” Basch paused. “Your brother. What became –”

“He’s dead,” Vaan snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Basch murmured.

Disbelief swarmed over Vaan’s face, and he yelled, “It was you who killed him!”

“I give you my word,” the ex-knight said earnestly, “that was not the way of it.”

Gingerly seating himself, he told a story of the events of two years past, in so compelling a way that Daina could almost see them for herself.

The fortress at Nalbina. Basch makes his way to the king’s room to stop the treaty-signing. Once there, Archadian soldiers surround him. King Raminas is already dead. Basch fights, but it’s no use, and two of the enemy hold him, force him to kneel with his arms pinned, hidden behind a screen. A second Basch (whose real name was Noah fon Ronsenburg, the same judge Daina and the others followed into the oubliette) stands in the light by Reks, talking to him, filling his ears with poison as he fills the boy’s gut with steel.

Daina covered her ears with her hands as if she could shut out the images in her mind.

“A twin brother?” Balthier’s cultured tone was that of a man amused by the antics of a street mummer. “Fancy that. But still, the pieces fit. I’ll give you that much. And he did look like you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Vaan said flatly.

Basch sounded downright ancient when he said, “Of course not. It was my fault that Reks was there. I am sorry.”

“My brother,” Vaan said, “he trusted you. He trusted you, and he lost everything. How can I believe you?”

“Not me then,” Basch answered. “Believe in your brother. He was a fine soldier. He fought to the last to protect his homeland.” He paused again. “No. Surely he fought to protect his brother.”

“You don’t know anything!” Vaan cried.

Daina touched his shoulder, but he turned angrily away from her.

“Believe what you want to. Whatever it takes to make you happy,” Balthier put in icily. He walked off, tossing a glare at Basch on the way by. “What’s done is done.”

* * *

The seething Mist led them straight into a mimic queen’s nest.

The mimics they had seen so far were nothing when compared to their mother. She reared up on her many legs, throwing everything into chaotic flashes of darkness and light. She nearly filled the room, her quivering abdomen lit from within like stained glass, blue, purple, red, and orange. She stomped around in a fury, aiming to crush the fleshy creatures that had disturbed her. In the struggle, Daina lost sight of Balthier and Fran, but an arrow whizzed by her ear and embedded itself with a satisfying thump in the queen’s thorax. The mimic screeched with a sound like metal tearing, or lightning ripping the sky. Her voracious, new-hatched babies scurried about the room, feeding on the power conduits. The lights flickered dangerously.

“Get rid of those!” Daina yelled at Vaan, pointing at the tiny batteries.

He went after them willingly, slicing their bodies apart, cursing every time one of them sent electric shocks up his arm. His hair stood on end like wet dandelion fluff. The lights stabilized.

Daina grasped the osafune in both hands and charged beneath the queen’s stamping legs to hack at her belly. Basch, she noted, was doing the same. The queen did not bleed, but their blades sparked in rainbow bursts with each hit, draining her glow. For several minutes the two of them worked in grim tandem to bring the monster down. When she finally fell, her enormous carapace smashed through the wall and started a cave-in that sent them all running for their lives.

They barreled into searing sunlight. Panting, Daina leaned over and braced her hands on her knees, watching drops of her sweat hit the sand and immediately disappear. Judging by the shortness of her shadow, it was close to noon. She’d been awake for over thirty-six hours.

She closed her eyes, waiting for her heart to slow. She’d been separated from Amalia for twelve of those hours. She prayed that her lady was safe.

“To think Dalmascan air could taste so sweet,” Basch said.

Daina started. She hadn’t realized he was so near. Disconcerted, she straightened and moved toward Fran. She could go on pretending he didn’t exist from over there, since she hadn’t yet resolved to either believe his story or to completely condemn him as a liar and a traitor.


	3. Interlude, part two

It wasn’t that easy. Not with the way his gaze kept following her. She ducked her head, allowing her hair to cover her face. He didn’t turn away like other people. He just kept staring at whatever he wanted. Or whomever he wanted. Had his time in solitary unhinged his mind?

“Where are we?” Vaan asked.

“The Estersand, by the look of it,” Balthier said. “Let’s back to Rabanastre before we shrivel up. By your leave, Captain.”

Basch’s voice sounded again, rough and low, and so gentle it made Daina shiver.

“Yes, the hour of my return is already over late,” he said. He didn’t sound insane. “The people may hate me, but that does not free me from my charge.”

_Your_ charge? Daina nearly bit her cheek when she clenched her teeth. The others walked off, eager to return to the relative safety of the royal city. She said nothing as she fell into step behind them, but all the while her heart smoldered in her chest. She understood him. His charge as a Knight of the Order was to protect Amalia.

The Order was gone, and protecting Amalia was _her_ charge. She wouldn’t relinquish her place to a dead man.

The hopelessness of her situation crashed down on her then. She had escaped Nalbina, but now what? She was no closer to Amalia than she had been before. And now this! Her priority was to seek out the Resistance, if there was a Resistance left after Vayne’s coup de grâce. She would also have to deliver Basch to them, which meant she wasn’t rid of him yet. Dispirited, she lagged behind the others, so that when she caught up to them at the Eastgate, they were preparing to go their separate ways.

“I thank you,” Basch said to the sky pirates with frank sincerity.

Balthier cocked his head. “I’d avoid crowds if I were you. In this town you’re still a traitor, you know.”

“The Resistance will surely find me soon,” he said. He turned to Vaan. “Fates will we meet again. I would pay my respects to your brother.”

Vaan made no reply, his face unsure. Not seeming to expect more, Basch walked away. Balthier pointed at the boy.

“You’re a fugitive now, too,” he warned. “Stay low for a while.”

Daina, however, was in no mood for one of Balthier’s lectures. She jogged after the retreating form of Basch, his bright hair easily visible amid the more flaxen locks of the natives. “Wait!”

He stopped. Faced Daina, reluctantly it seemed, the wind teasing his long, unruly golden curls. He was still barefoot, and for some stupid reason, this fact upset her.

“Come with me,” she sighed. “We can offer a bath, a change of clothes, and food.”

His gaze darted to the osafune at her hip and the green tassel swinging from the pommel. “Am I to take it that the Resistance has already found me?”

“Yes,” she said curtly. She didn’t want to talk to him anymore. His voice did strange, uncomfortable things to her, making her feel anxious and disconnected from the real world. She spun on her heel and marched off, heading for the nearest entrance to Lowtown. She’d feel a lot safer underground, away from the curiosity that rippled through the crowds around them. Basch’s barbaric mien, his unshaven face and his bare head, aroused far too much interest in the crowds flowing around them. There were too many keen eyes in Rabanastre. Too many crimson banners adorning the sides of the buildings, hanging the black winged serpents of House Solidor over their heads. She was sure she looked no better than he by this point. She had to get them both off the street.

How had everything gone so horribly wrong?

“I underestimated him,” she muttered.

“Who?” he asked at her shoulder. She may have been tall for a woman, but he was still taller, with a longer stride.

She sighed, aggravated. Had she no right to the privacy of her own thoughts? Couldn’t she even think with him around? “Vayne Solidor. His traps. You blundered into one, and so did I. I do not intend to make that mistake again.”

After a moment, he raised his chin and asked, “Do you believe me, then?”

“No,” she said. Fran’s words surfaced on her tongue, tasting bitter. “I was . . . making note of the similarities in our situations.”

“You are the one from Nabradia, Praeities’s daughter,” he said, abruptly switching subjects. It wasn’t a question. Had he known her father, as Vossler had?

“I am,” she said, refusing to relax her guard. “What of it?”

“Amalia –”

She glared at him. Her eyes were exactly level with his mouth. “Don’t say it,” she snapped. “Don’t say her name, don’t say another word out here. I have to report to the others, anyway, and you can hear the answer then. It’s too dangerous now.”

“Aye,” he murmured, making her shiver like a wet cat.

She almost burst into tears of relief when she saw Balzac. He perched on a crate in the north sprawl outside one of the Resistance’s hideouts. He looked for all the world like a Lowtown lurker, out of work and spoiling for a fight. As an added deterrent, the Resistance had propped signs on the crates and barrels surrounding him and strung more along the walls and ceiling. Each one warned that the area beyond him was a last quarantine of the plague. Balzac had been hired to deflect any Imperial noses that came sniffing around, be they Dalmascan or Archadian.

When Balzac saw her, he leaped off the crate with a glad cry of welcome and moved to embrace her, but then he saw Basch and his eyes about fell out of his head. Daina rushed up to him and planted both palms against his chest, demanding his attention before he could make a scene and betray them all.

“Balzac,” she said urgently, “time is of utmost importance. What of Vossler?”

“The captain’s inside,” he said. He pressed his hand over hers, holding them against his heart. “We thought you lost.”

“So did I,” she murmured. She pulled her hands back.

* * *

_A nap,_ Daina thought, ticking things off her mental list. _A bath, clean clothes. Now, food._ Once she had been debriefed by her captain, Daina’s participation in the meeting was no longer required. She took her bowl and cup to the table near Vossler’s elbow, taking strength from his solid, unflappable presence, and listened to the discussion heating up like a pot on the boil.

The decimated Resistance had been hit hard, but Basch’s rise from the dead seemed to breathe a sort of frenzied life into the remaining men. Except for Vossler, who stood with his arms crossed and his lips sealed.

“Then what of Ondore’s proclamation? Did they fool even the marquis?” one man shouted, referring to the fact that Basch should have been executed two years ago. The man’s name was Mikkel, and he made a living tanning leather. Though Daina regretted the bile-like stench he brought with him, because of the sour beer he used in the tanning vats, he was a valued supplier of their cause.

She chewed slowly, thinking. What of Ondore’s other proclamation, in which he had announced that Princess Ashelia had committed suicide? It had been a lie, a necessary one. What had possessed the marquis to lie about Captain Ronsenburg?

“What if a judge killed the king, not the captain?” Mikkel’s neighbor put in. A chocobo breeder who brought a whole different level of odor to the meetings. “That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?”

“Then the captain would be brother to a judge! How are we to trust such a man?”

Right then, Basch appeared from the back rooms, silencing them.

Daina froze with her spoon halfway to the emptied bowl.

The Resistance may have received aid from Marquis Ondore in the beginning, but for the past year, thanks to increased political pressure on Bhujerba’s ruler by the Empire, they’d been left mostly to their own devices. How had Vossler put it? Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Basch was more beggarly than most. He wore cannibalized parts of a uniform that had originally come from the stores of Ondore’s own city guard, the sainikah: Open-heeled boots, linen shorts, and a red and brown vest, its buckles undone. Beneath that, a linen shirt, only the bottom button closed. He had strapped a pauldron to his left shoulder, the strap checkered yellow, pink, blue, and green, the colors of Dalmasca’s royalty, and tugged mailed, fingerless gloves onto his hands. He looked so much healthier, fed and clean and no doubt drunk on potion, his bare arms and the vertical line of chest and stomach visible below the shirt showing off his physique and warm skin tone. Golden, like his curling hair, trimmed to his shoulders and combed off his face, exposing the scar that not only disrupted his eyebrow but also bit deep into his left ear. Some attack in the past had nearly severed the lobe.

“Now there is the Basch that I remember,” remarked Vossler, jerking Daina out of her reverie.

“Then will you fight again at my side?” Basch asked him.

Daina stared into her bowl in horror. Why had the sight of Basch discomposed her so? She’d seen men before. In all manner of dress and undress. She and Amalia had been the only women in the Resistance camp; Balzac didn’t own a shirt. Dalmasca was simply too hot. She’d also already seen that much of Basch’s body, and more, although – she winced. She didn’t want to think about the bruised and bloody figure hanging in the crow’s cage.

A third man, Jory, slammed both hands on the table, which made Daina quickly stand in case the table became an accessory in the war of escalation. “His word alone convinces me of nothing!” Jory shouted.

Basch looked to her for assistance. Biting her lips, she shook her head. She could not give her word in his favor. Not yet.

The non-judgmental understanding in his eyes stole her breath and left her dizzy.

“I’d take his word over that of a mouthpiece marquis!” came the call from the other end of the room.

“Then you name Reks liar with him,” Stav said levelly.

The door flew open. A minor comet burst into the room in the form of Vaan. He looked ready to take every man on, a short teenager clutching a sheathed sword that was too big for him and spitting fire. “My brother was no liar!” he shouted.

“Just the opposite,” Basch said softly, acknowledging Vaan’s entrance. “Reks was the witness they needed. They had to make it appear as if I’d killed the king. Reks bears no blame. The Fates have willed it.”

Annoyed, Vossler strode over to the boy, said, “So this is Reks’s brother,” and wrenched the sword out of his hands.

Daina recognized it and wondered who had commissioned Vaan to bring it. Why send Vaan in particular? Who had known what would gain the boy entry to the Resistance hideout?

Vossler did not seem overly concerned with the details. He did not acknowledge Vaan’s bewildered and hurt expression, instead rounding on Basch. “Your words may convince this child, but they weigh too lightly on the scales for my taste. Our paths will remain separate.”

Basch’s eyes narrowed. “Do you not think Amalia worth saving?”

“I hold men’s lives in my hands,” Vossler said after a slight hesitation. “I must see foes in every shadow. The night we moved against Vayne, he knew. I will not chance such disadvantage again. I must treat you as I would Ondore – as I would treat any abettor of the Empire.”

“Then what will you do? Hold me here in chains?” Basch challenged.

The two men glared at each other, one dark night to the other’s sunny day, both sporting the same thin beard and goatee. Once, they had been best friends, but apparently, their shared past was not enough to convince Vossler of Basch’s innocence. The tension in the air was thick enough to touch. After an endless minute, Vossler tossed the sword, still in its sheath, and the other caught it.

“Some things never change. Do they.” Once again, this was not a question, and Basch sounded regretful.

“Listen to me, Basch,” Vossler said in his quick, clipped way. “Your cage may have no bars, but it is a cage. The eyes of the Resistance watch unblinking.”

Basch’s jaw tightened. “Let them watch. I know something of cages.”

He swept out. After a wary scan of the room, Vaan followed him.

At last, Daina found her voice.

“Vossler –”

“Daina.” He executed an about-face and gripped her shoulder. “Quickly. Go with him. I need you to be my eyes.”

“I – what?” Dumbstruck, she scrambled for words. “Amalia – we must rescue her – that’s why I’m here –”

“No,” he said, and now he held her by both shoulders. “There is much to be done here. You can best serve Amalia by watching Basch, by tracking his movements. Go. I will be in touch.”

Which was how she found herself outside the hideout, hurrying past an interested Balzac to shadow a man she would rather never see again.

“That’s right,” Vaan was saying as she neared them. “Amalia’s in the Resistance.”

“Then you know her.” Basch’s face closed, shuttered like an abandoned house.

Vaan laced his fingers across the back of his head. “Sort of. We met just before we got sent to Nalbina.” He paused. “I’ve known nicer people.”

Daina couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing. Somehow, after everything that had happened, that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Truth be told, so have I,” she admitted, and both men turned around.

* * *

They’d gotten a smile out of Basch. “Our paths keep crossing, yours and mine,” he said to Vaan. “It’s more than coincidence.”

Vaan rolled his eyes. “It’s annoying.”

“I’m sorry. Allow me one last annoyance: A favor to ask.”

Vaan and Daina looked at him, and then at each other. Daina shrugged.

“I want you to take me to Balthier,” Basch explained without being asked. “Even caged birds need wings.”

Vaan looked at the grimy ceiling. He sauntered off, and Daina followed him. After a moment, so did Basch. Lowtown, which had originally been built as underground storage for the city before war turned it into a haven for the poor and homeless, bustled with activity. Vaan seemed comfortable down there, despite the gloom and stale air.

Of course, he would be, Daina admonished herself. Orphans made up eighty percent of those who didn’t have places to sleep.

“This makes us even,” Vaan decided, walking backward.

Puzzled, Basch frowned. “Even?”

“For Nalbina. We couldn’t have done it without you,” Vaan said.

Daina grinned. She liked Vaan. Had he been a year or so older, the Resistance would have recruited him. Well, she was Resistance, wasn’t she? She held out her fist. “Are you always such a smooth talker?”

“I’m just getting started.” He laughed and bumped his fist into hers.

“So,” Daina heartily said, clapping her hands together. If she was going to do this, then it was going to be done right. “You know Rabanastre better than I do. Where would a tired and thirsty sky pirate go?”

“The Sandsea,” he said instantly. He blinked as her meaning sank in. “Wait! You’re coming too?”

“I’m under orders,” she said, rolling her eyes toward Basch, who said nothing.

This was just fine with her. Their destination was clear on the other side of the city, past the shops travelers and Imperial soldiers frequented. She and Vaan kept the conversation going. After he had explained about Dalan, the old man who lived in the south sprawl and kept Lowtown’s urchins running around on odd errands in return for information, she realized who had spirited away Basch’s sword two years ago and who had inserted Vaan into the Resistance’s path. She wondered what Dalan’s little spies had told him but suspected he would have nothing to say to her. Vaan asked her how she had ended up with them, and his eyes got bigger and bigger as she related the tale (leaving out everything that had to do with who Amalia really was). Daina absently stroked the green tassel as she spoke. Amalia. Being apart from her lady like this, it hurt. Vaan’s company loosened something in her. She hadn’t talked this much in one shot, ever. As a knight, she had to weigh each of her words carefully, to hold her thoughts to herself unless Amalia or Vossler requested them. Vaan made it easy to laugh.

The Sandsea, Rabanastre’s busiest pub. Beside the patio, a pack of children playing a game caught Basch’s attention. He slowed and then stopped.

Vaan doubled back, looking for him. “A lot of kids lost their parents in the war,” he said.

“I am sorry,” Basch said.

“You don’t have to keep apologizing,” Vaan sighed. Then, surprising both knights, he added, “Really, it’s all right. I know it wasn’t your fault. I see that now. You didn’t kill my brother. It was the Empire. My brother trusted you.”

He reached for the door to the Sandsea and pulled it to. “And he was right,” he finished. Without waiting for them, he went inside.

A smile danced around Basch’s mouth when he tilted his face to the sun. The Sword of the Order was belted around his hips, and a green tassel dangled from the loop on the opposite side, balancing the look. He still wore the phoenix pendant, silver against his skin, but it hung the right way up, its head and wings stretching for the sky.

Daina unconsciously adopted Amalia’s usual pose, crossing her arms over her bare midriff and cupping her elbows in her hands.

“Shall we go in?” she asked quietly.

He nodded, and they entered the pub.

After squinting in the harsh sun outside, it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the weak light that struggled to penetrate the Sandsea’s grimy leaded glass windows. Fortunately, Vaan hadn’t gone far. It was loud and crowded in the pub, and the owner’s homebrewed ale crossed the bar in significant quantities. Tomaj himself hollered a welcome they couldn’t hear, waving from behind the gleaming bar top. Daina searched through the faces of the patrons, seeking Balthier, and then Vaan pointed to the balcony. Fran’s long, silver and sable ears were clearly visible up there.

Vaan took the stairs two at a time but stopped so suddenly that Daina collided with him. Balthier and Fran sat at a round, intimate table with a lantern in the middle. Though still daytime, the fire magicite had been lit. Magicite crystals were naturally imbued with Mist, and a source of great energy. Fire magicite, when warmed between palms or by breath, glowed like a candle flame.

The sky pirates had not yet noticed Vaan or Daina in the dim, smoky atmosphere. Balthier crossed his arms and Fran put her cheek on her fist, both determinedly silent, while a stooped, blue-skinned bangaa, his reptilian snout white-bristled with age, talked at them, clearly upset. Migelo was one of the more prominent merchants of sundries. His clothes were as sumptuous and trendy as Balthier’s, though all the extra padding made the stooped bangaa look a bit like a collapsed vanilla soufflé.

“As I said, a misunderstanding.” Balthier sounded angry.

“Misunderstanding?” the bangaa repeated in a tone of absolute disbelief. He waved his thick arms so that his shirt sleeves billowed like sails. His floppy ears, clipped into golden barrettes, chimed when he tossed his head. “What I am understanding is they took Penelo because of you!”

“What?” Forgetting their mission, Vaan rushed over to the bangaa. “What about Penelo?”

“Oh, Vaan!” Migelo nearly sobbed, swiveling around. His bushy white eyebrows and dark, soulful eyes lent him a hume expression of petulance. “They’ve taken Penelo! And there was a note – a note for this Balthier! ‘Come to Lhusu Mines,’ it said.”

Fran straightened. “It’s Ba’Gamnan. He was in Nalbina.”

“If anything were to happen to that sweet child,” Migelo went querulously on. “Why, I’ve her parents’ memory to consider! You’re going to her aid, and that’s that! It’s what you sky pirates do, isn’t it?”

“I don’t respond well to orders,” Balthier growled, unsmiling. “You do know that the Imperial fleet is massing at Bhujerba?”

“Fine, then I’ll go!” Vaan cried. “You at least have an airship, don’t you? Just get me there, and I’ll find Penelo myself.”

Basch stepped forward. “I’ll join you. I have some business there as well.”

“An audience with the marquis, by chance?” Balthier purred, smirking.

Daina narrowed her eyes at Basch. So. He meant to aid Amalia, starting with her uncle, Marquis Halim Ondore IV, the ruler of Bhujerba. The very one who had announced Ashe’s suicide to protect her. Not a bad plan, Daina supposed. All they needed was conveyance. Perhaps they could get more use out of this genteel sky pirate, after all.

Vaan pulled an uncut orange crystal about the size of a halved head of cabbage out of his sash. “Balthier, just take us, and this is yours.”

“The gods are toying with us,” Fran grumbled, crossing her long legs.

Daina surmised the crystal was the stone the pirates had sought, and Vaan the one who got to it first. Balthier groaned and stood up, Fran right behind him.

“Bhujerba’s on the sky continent of Dorstonis, and the magicite mine we’re looking for is in Bhujerba,” he rattled off. “If we’re to save the girl, we start there. You ready to leave?”

“I’m ready,” Vaan said in a tone that implied that it didn’t matter if anybody else was or not, they were going. Daina couldn’t blame him. That innocent, frantic girl, in the claws of headhunters – it was unthinkable. How had Ba’Gamnan known of Penelo’s existence in the first place? Unless . . . Ba’Gamnan must have seen Balthier pass his handkerchief to Penelo and returned for the girl, thinking her of some importance to his prey.

Balthier turned his gaze skyward and sighed. “Seems I took on more baggage in Rabanastre than I’d planned. Well, let’s save your girl and be done with it. Do be quick. I’d like to be rid of this headache as soon as possible. Come on.”

* * *

“This Ba’Gamnan,” Basch said. “Who is he?”

“I don’t really know,” Daina admitted.

Balthier spoke to a receptionist at the private airships counter in the aerodrome. The receptionist pointed toward a hangar gate, and Balthier waved them to follow him past the rows of seats in the waiting area, full of travelers of all walks. The aerodrome’s wide windows provided breathtaking vistas of aircraft, resembling enormous, deep sea creatures with skin of steel and glass, glossair engines tucked away beneath wings like fins, docking and taking off in an endless, well-orchestrated dance. Inside the aerodrome, well-to-do families from Archades blended with gap-toothed, breechclouted, tassel-tailed seeqs. Passels of moogles scampered everywhere, some on foot, others flitting along a few feet off the ground, their little wings blurring. Vaan hopped over a heap of military-gray sea bags next to a knot of hume and bangaa sailors to catch up to Balthier. He trotted between the hume sky pirate and his viera partner, excitedly firing off questions about his airship almost faster than Balthier could answer them.

“I saw him in Nalbina, speaking to the judge,” Daina finished.

“Gabranth,” Basch said wearily. “The judge goes by the name Gabranth.”

She cast him a sidelong glance, but simply said, “Our sky pirate comes complete with a price on his head.”

“Regretful,” he said. “Still, he is the help we sorely need.”

“To rescue Amalia?”

He turned the full force of his gaze on her, and she tensed, readying herself for a fight. His amber eyes weren’t nearly as gentle as his voice.

“Yes,” he said. “I thank you for your service these two years past. It must have been hard for you, after losing your home.”

“My home is with Her Highness,” she said frostily, “not in Nabudis.”

_We are not similar,_ she thought. _You ran from the Empire when you lost your home. You made Dalmasca yours, but you weren’t here when Dalmasca needed you. I was. I am not like you._

He must have read some of her thoughts in her face, for he withdrew again. Unhappy. Alone.

Daina glanced curiously out one of the aerodrome’s panoramic windows as they neared the hangar. Balthier’s ship, the _Strahl,_ was a magnificent craft painted white, purple, and gold. Her fuselage was sleek, her glossair engines buxom, her windscreen tinted illegally dark. In the cockpit, Balthier and Fran slid into padded seats.

“How flies Bhujerba?” Basch queried, ducking into the cockpit. Daina ducked in after him; Vaan didn’t need to bend at all.

“Oh, she’s as free as can be, for now.” Balthier started the engines. The fuel gauge in the dash lit up, lines flowing from green to blue. “The Empire took notice when they announced the princess’s suicide and your untimely execution.”

“If it becomes known that I’m alive, the marquis will lose their favor,” Basch offered.

Balthier wasn’t listening. Everything about him bristled like the fur on a cornered mastiff. “I try to steer clear of such things,” he said quellingly.

He took the controls. Above them, the hangar doors opened like flower petals to the sun, letting in a stream of piercing white daylight. “Right. It’s time to fly. And no wagging tongues or you’re like to bite them off.”

“I’m coming, Penelo,” Vaan murmured, taking a seat and staring out of the windscreen.

Apparently, they were all alone. Divided, each with his or her own agenda. Daina chose a seat and buckled herself in, trying to allow the view beyond the portal to distract her as the airship rose from the hangar. Rabanastre dropped behind, the lush palms and the swift Nebra River disappearing into the yellowish smear of the desert as they ascended in a long arc. The _Strahl_ soared through a turquoise sky, diamantine clouds, and topaz sunlight. In the west, the blue darkened to indigo like shadows creeping across the heavens.

Sunset was a truly magnificent sight when viewed from above. Only once before had Daina ridden the sky, when Prince Rasler took her to Rabanastre. But her heart wasn’t quiet, and she closed her eyes on nature’s splendor. Bereft of everyone she knew and held dear, she tucked her feet onto her seat and hugged her knees to her chest while the discontent brewing in the cockpit threatened to smother her.

Eventually, Vaan’s curiosity got the better of his mouth, and he inserted himself between Balthier and Fran, peppering the pair with questions. Fran’s amusement was contagious, and Balthier thawed enough to boast of the work he’d personally put into the airship, after he’d stolen it from a shipyard in Archades, of course.

Daina wasn’t interested in the ship. As soon as the _Strahl_ leveled out for its long cruise to Dorstonis, she got up and walked out of the cockpit.

She wandered the ship’s corridors, beautifully carpeted, its metal bulkheads bathed in bright lamplight. There weren’t many corridors, nor were they long. Daina discovered an aft lounge, which offered cushioned chairs, lap blankets, and a table bolted to the floor. Delighted, she opened a panel in the bulkhead and discovered a music player, complete with a boxed collection of recorded music crystals. These, she sifted through, marveling at Balthier’s eclectic taste. She chose a compilation of familiar instrumental songs and started the player.

Sitting by herself in the lounge, curled up under a blanket with the osafune resting against her chair, Daina sang along with the music. She put all of her anxiety, her pain, and her confusion into her voice and then let it all go. The compilation came to an end. It started over. She fell silent. Drowsiness engulfed her. Her breathing slowed. She drifted toward sleep.

“Breathtaking,” said a rough, low voice behind her.

Daina sat up so fast that her head spun. Basch stood in the doorway – the one that, she realized, she’d neglected to close.

“That brand of beauty is enough to move a man to tears, or to war,” he said. “May I join you?”

“As it pleases you,” she said, pulling the blanket closer. She didn’t want his compliments. Once a knight, always a knight. She was not a maid to be flattered into good humor.

Basch seemed more interested in a chair than in her gratitude. Exhaustion dragged at every inch of his frame as he settled into one on the opposite side of the table.

“Are you all right?” she asked warily.

He stayed silent for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her, but then he said, “I do not sleep well. Too many thoughts argue for my attention, too many memories that I cannot repress. Faces I shall not see again. Choices that can never be reversed. Of all the emotions available to us as humes, regret is perhaps the most powerful.”

Daina’s lashes dropped. She felt sorry for the way she’d acted in the aerodrome. Her dislike was childish and uncalled for, now that she had actually met the man behind the legend. Behind the lies. She could think of nothing to say. Softly, the music continued to play.

“I seem to be always requesting something,” he said presently.

Despite herself, she smiled thinly. “As of yet, you have not asked the unreasonable.”

He hesitated. “If you would sing more, I might be able to rest without dreams.”

Daina thought about it and then decided the request was harmless enough. So she sang, weaving lullabies through the instrumental music drifting out of the speakers until his eyes closed and he slept. So still, so deeply. The kind of sleep she doubted he’d had in over two years. When Daina draped her blanket over him, he didn’t twitch an eyelash.

Up close, she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Wrinkles earned from a lifetime of squinting in the Dalmascan sun. She lightly touched the backs of her fingers to his freshly shaven cheek. Once, he must have been happy. Like she had been. Like Ashe. And Vaan.

What else would the Empire take from them before House Solidor was satisfied?

* * *

_“Ow!”_

Daina and Vaan lurched apart. They’d tried to look out of the same portal and cracked heads.

“Is your skull made of rock? Go find your own window,” Daina complained, shoving him away.

He resisted, pushing back. “Just move over a little.”

“No.”

“C’mon!”

“No!”

“Settle down, children,” Balthier said.

Daina suspected he was laughing and made a rude gesture at the back of his seat that she’d picked up from Balzac. Vaan snorted. Then the view drew them both close to the glass again, heads pressed together, staring in awe at the skycity of Bhujerba.

The land seemed striped with thickly clustered green trees and fluffy white cloud. The morning sun shone from below the continent. The _Strahl_ moved in low and fast, swerving around towering cloudstone magicite shaped like ginormous chocobo tail feathers in the shimmering lavender-blue color of glacial ice. The city itself clung to the purvama, the general term for a floating landmass, which was kept aloft by the cloudstone formations. Modest buildings conformed to the natural hills and valleys, and Marquis Ondore’s estate, a palace set between two tallest and most graceful wings of magicite, glowed like stained glass. Bhujerba, a small city-state, thrived on the export of particularly fine magicite. It was ruled by the marquis, who, by staying in the Empire’s good graces, managed to stave off the Imperial invasion which had brought Dalmasca to its knees.

In spite of Dorstonis’s tropical coordinates, it was a cold place. In the aerodrome, Daina stepped off the gangplank and stood aside for the team of furry moogles, their pompons bobbing at her knee level, who headed for Balthier to offer services on the airship. Their little paws clutched wrenches, ratchets, and toolboxes. Their eyes were bright, their mousy ears perky, and their coveralls oil-stained – but Nono, the _Strahl’s_ personal mechanic, took offense to what he called “horning in by questionable types, kupo!”

The lead moogle put himself nose to nose with Nono, who puffed up his furry cheeks.

“Kupo? Who are you calling questionable, sir?”

“Clear off!” Nono snapped, whiskers a-quiver. “You’re not wanted. I think I know what I’m doing in my own ship, kupo-po!”

“We’re only trying to scrape out a living. Times are hard on all of us, kupo!”

Their squeaky voices sounded like a pair of dire rats fighting over a dropped sweet bun. Daina turned her back on them and took a deep breath. Vertigo swept over her. The air was thin at this altitude.

Balthier eventually soothed Nono’s tiny bruised ego and sent the other moogles away. In the sudden, relative silence, several Imperial soldiers marched past. Basch made a sound low in his throat.

“Easy,” Balthier cautioned him, sauntering by as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Basch nodded. He seemed to be ignoring Daina today. She couldn’t decide if this annoyed her or relieved her, and she sped up to walk with Fran.

“No good,” one of the soldiers said. “He’s not here. Keep searching!”

They saluted each other and clanked off.

“You’re a dead man. Don’t forget it,” Balthier said to Basch out of the corner of his mouth. “And no names.”

“Of course,” said Basch.

“Wonder who they’re looking for,” Vaan muttered.

“Not us,” Daina said. “Try not to look so guilty.”

He grinned sheepishly and scrubbed the back of his head.

They strolled out of the aerodrome and across a massive bridge. Grates lined the center, which allowed tourists to observe the restless ocean miles below. Even at this early hour, the bridge teemed with foot traffic. Daina had heard it said that if anyone fell from the skycity, they would wash up on some faraway shore, still alive.

“The Lhusu Mines are just up ahead,” Balthier said. “Though, I do hear there’s not much left there these days.”

A young voice intruded. “You’re on your way to the mines? Then, please, allow me to accompany you. I’ve an errand to attend there.”

Daina and Fran, in front, turned around in surprise. A black-haired Archadian boy, perhaps twelve years old and as pale-skinned as Daina, hopped off the bridge railing and approached them fearlessly. Some noble’s child, apparently alone. His bell-sleeved blouse was white with gold detailing beneath an exquisite, pine-blue tunic, slashed to show his crimson undershirt. High green boots met navy blue shorts. A precocious smile and small nose topped the ensemble. Tiny ruby earrings glinted in his ears, and a heavy-looking, ostentatious silver pendant, two winged serpents twined around each other, hung over his front.

“What manner of errand?” Basch asked.

“What errand?” The boy clasped his gloved hands behind his back, twirled on one wedge heel, and strolled to the grate in the center of the bridge. As if interested in the view, he peered through it. “I might ask the same of you.”

Daina counted two heartbeats, and then Balthier said with false cheeriness, “Right, come on then.”

Vaan gawked at him. “What?”

“Excellent,” said the boy happily.

“Do me a favor and stay where I can keep my eye on you,” Balthier said to him. “Should be less trouble that way.”

“For us both,” the boy agreed slyly.

Daina’s eyebrows jumped into her hair. Since when did Balthier do something for someone else without prior coercion? However, she made no comment. She would wait and see what this was all about.

“So what’s your name?” Vaan presently asked the boy – a standard question that would put all of his fears at ease, Daina knew.

“Oh.” The boy’s gaze drifted to the clouds above them, and he turned away again. “I – I’m Lamont.”

Vaan rubbed one finger under his nose. “Don’t worry. I don’t know what’s in that mine, Lamont, but you’re in good hands.” He put his hand on the small boy’s shoulder and then grinned. “Right, Basch?”

Shock wiped Balthier’s expression clean, but then fury darkened his features. Only by a supreme effort did Daina manage not to put her face in her hands.

When Basch merely sighed over Vaan’s confused head, Lamont smiled.

No longer talking, the six of them slowly wound through Bhujerba’s narrow, up and down streets, where the buildings pushed right up against them with no footpath in between. Occasionally, Daina asked directions of one of the friendly parijanah tour guides stationed on street corners and armed with their blue information books. An inordinate number of miners clogged the byways, talking or lazing about, watching Daina and the others pass with dull, resentful eyes, though the carefree craftsmoogles treated the situation like a bit of a holiday. Sainikah soldiers blocked several side streets. Daina heard a passing conversation that told her the city guard were there to keep the miners and tourists out of the mines because of an Imperial inspection. Balthier strolled by one of the blue-vested sainikah, his hand smoothly passing a bribe on the way past. No one detained them.

“The Lhusu Mines,” he announced at the top of a long flight of stairs and another bridge that led straight to a wide, well-traveled, and dimly-lit mine entrance. “One of the richest veins in Ivalice.”

“An unsettling sight,” Daina said, suppressing a shiver, “to stand before a mouth of rock and earth that leads below ground on a continent in the sky.”

“Under Imperial guard, no doubt,” Basch diagnosed.

Young Lamont pushed past him, his pointed chin high. “Actually, no. With but few exceptions, the Imperial army is not permitted in Bhujerba.” He smiled up at them. “Well, shall we proceed?”

Basch and Balthier, with more than ten years separating them, shared an amused but baffled look. Who was this child, who spoke like a man twice his age?

They descended into the gloom of the mine. Before she had taken a score of steps, however, Balthier grabbed Daina’s wrist and yanked her behind a pillar, where Fran and Basch already hid. A few seconds later, Lamont and Vaan heard the advancing footsteps and vanished behind another pillar. From inside the mines, a strange party appeared, led by a judge magister.

_It’s not Gabranth,_ Daina told her painfully pounding heart. This man’s judicer’s plate was more burnished than black, and his helm spread into two horns that curved sideways like a dual-handled cup.

Just behind the judge strode an older gentleman in a long, tight-fitting coat, a jewel-headed cane in his gloved hand, his face set in dignified offense.

* * *

“You will forgive me for asking,” the helmed judge said, an unfamiliar voice muffled in a familiar, metallic way, “but you are diverting the purest of the magicite –”

“I can assure you it reaches Lord Vayne most discretely,” the noble interrupted in a saturated Bhujerban accent, deliberately and precisely pronouncing each _t_ and long _e_ sounds.

“You wear your saddle well,” the judge approved.

Aside from the judge and the noble, two Imperial soldiers and a pair of male rev valets paced at the back of the party. The revs, as well-dressed and dignified as their master, narrowed feline eyes at the judge, their furred muzzles tightening. Their jackets and breeches looked sewn on, they were so tight, and their short, bristly tails poked from beneath a frill of lace. Large earrings dangled from the small, pointed ears on the sides of their oddly flat heads.

The noble tapped his cane on the stone floor, tossing his head high so that his upswept white curls bounced carelessly across his tanned forehead. He was handsome for his age and probably knew it.

“Be that as it may,” he haughtily said, “I have no intention of being bridled, Your Honor.”

“Then you prefer the whip?” The armored judge turned toward him, head and shoulders both. “Stubbornness will see not only you broken, Excellency, but Bhujerba as well.”

With this threat, the party ascended the steps and disappeared into the daylight outside. Lamont emerged from behind the pillar, staring after them.

“Halim Ondore IV, the Marquis of Bhujerba,” he said as if introducing him. “The marquis served as mediator at the negotiations of Dalmasca’s surrender. It would appear that he is somewhat less neutral now.”

Balthier cocked his head. “They say he’s been helping the Resistance.”

“They say many things.” Lamont didn’t bother looking at the sky pirate.

“You’re certainly well informed,” Balthier went on, nonchalant. “Who did you say you were, again?”

“What difference does it make?” Vaan butted in. “We have to find Penelo.”

That got Lamont’s attention. “And Penelo is your –?”

“She’s a friend. She was kidnapped and taken here.” As if unable to control his impatience, Vaan ran off, giving the rest of them no choice but to follow.

Daina sighed. Penelo. Of course, they were here to save Penelo. Daina chafed against the delay, anxious to find and rescue her lady.

Balthier and Fran kept Lamont back with them, where they could cover him with shot and arrow, though the boy used his dual swords to good effect. The thin rapier he called a joyeuse flashed with each thrust, while the thick, serpentine swordbreaker acted like a shield. Daina, for her part, blocked Vaan at every step, constantly reminding the Dalmascan to stay with them. She couldn’t have him rushing headlong into the mines. There had been whispers of a monstrous snake, the nidhogg, slithering through these shafts. What good would it do to rescue Penelo but lose Vaan in the process?

They made their way slowly, often consulting the crisp, official cartographer’s guild map Lamont carried, battling through vampyr bats and corpses that were armored like knights. The skull defenders were the most persistent. Waiting in ambush, the undead swarmed their party when the whole of it stepped onto a long railway bridge, the Shunia Twinspan. The dizzying expanse of empty sky surrounded them on three sides. Bhujerba’s stone belly hung over their heads. The skeletons squawked like simians, hitting hard with their spears and their magicks. For every one that fell to Daina’s osafune, two more assembled themselves from the cracks between the rails and sleepers. Their blood-darkened bones, as well as the stench of death and black magick, were horrible.

So rattled by the experience was she, that she voluntarily spoke to Basch while everyone else tried to catch their breaths, safe at last on the far side of the bridge. “Do you ever wonder if that could happen to you?”

Basch paused in the act of retying one of his gloves and studied the now-quiet bridge. “The thought has crossed my mind,” he said at last.

“They were once men.” Daina hugged herself while the icy wind pulled at her green coat and her braid. “Knights who could not bear to be released from their vows by death, forced to wander for eternity, trapped souls full of anger and despair. As I am. I am angry that I could not protect Amalia. I despair that I cannot help her as I am now.”

“It is easy to imagine for yourself such a fate?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “It is hard to discredit the possibility.”

“I do not see one such as you succumbing to a useless existence such as that,” he said quietly, albeit reassuringly. “While we live, there is yet hope. It would be foolish to believe fighting is all you have. Amalia would not wish it.”

It was so faint that Daina might have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. The ghost of a smile touched his lips.

“Yes,” she said, an answering smile shyly tugging at her own lips. “There is hope.”

She was not ashamed of sharing her fear with him. Out of their group, only he would understand her feelings and her drive to protect Amalia.

“Let’s go,” Balthier called.

Daina blinked, and Basch looked away. Whatever spell that had held her captive dissolved. They moved on.

In a large, echoing cavern, Lamont knelt and patted the luminescent blue ground with a pristine white glove. “This is what I came here to see,” he said, his elfin eyebrows contracting. From within his red-lined tunic, he produced a large violet-blue crystal, which looked like a bottle of potion minus the neck. It glowed, eldritch, behind a latticework of metal bands.

“What’s that?” Vaan asked, peering over his shoulder.

“It’s nethicite. _Manufacted_ nethicite.”

Lost, Vaan repeated, “Nethicite?”

“Unlike regular magicite, which stores and releases magickal energy, nethicite absorbs it,” Lamont explained. “This is the fruit of research into the manufacture of nethicite. All at the hands of the Draklor Laboratory.”

The way he said it made Draklor sound like a school for mad scientists. Balthier narrowed his eyes at the boy, wholly focused now.

Unaware of the sky pirate’s scrutiny, Lamont stood and approached one of the rough-hewn walls, running his now-dirtied, gloved hand along it. “So this is where they’re getting the magicite from,” he murmured to himself.

As rangy as a coeurl, one of the great leopard-spotted felines of the uplands, Balthier glided toward him. “Errand all attended to, then?” he asked, deceptively friendly.

“Thank you,” Lamont said, turning around. “I’ll repay you shortly.”

Balthier’s hand descended near Lamont’s head, coming to rest against the wall, trapping the boy. He leaned in. “No, you’ll repay us now.”

He sounded furious. Threatening a child didn’t suit the indolent sky pirate at all. Daina accusingly turned on Fran, but her question died in her throat. The viera’s face was as impassive as always, though her eyes were fixed so tenderly on Balthier that Daina forced herself not to interfere. Surely, if Balthier meant to hurt the boy, Fran would stop him.

“We have too much on our hands to go on holding yours,” Balthier went on into Lamont’s suddenly closed, defiant face. “So where did you hear this fairy tale about nethicite? And where did you get that sample you carry? What do you know about the Draklor Laboratory?” He spoke faster, angrier. “Tell me: Who are you?”

“Balthier –” Vaan started to say, distressed, but then a snarl reverberated through the cavern.

“Ye kept us waiting, Balthier!”

* * *

Ba’Gamnan hulked toward them, his three bangaa henchmen closing ranks behind. They were all shirtless, their harem trousers cinched around slender ankles, their shanks as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. With a jolt, Daina realized that one of them was female, her scaly hide a lovely, pale lavender that belied the cruelty in her black eyes.

A laugh smeared itself all over the bounty hunter’s elongated face. “Ye slipped away in Nalbina. We missed ye!” He tilted his head, squinting at them from one eye. “First the judge, and now this boy. The whole affair has the smell of money. I may have to wet my beak a little.”

“Keep your snout in the trough where it belongs,” Balthier said scathingly. “This thinking ill befits you, Ba’Gamnan.”

“Balthier!” Ba’Gamnan howled, clenching his black-gloved claws. His short, reptilian tail thrashed. “Too long have I gone unpaid! I’ll carve my bounty out of that boy!”

Vaan popped out from behind Balthier. “Where’s Penelo?” he demanded. “We’re taking her back!”

“The girl?” Ba’Gamnan peered blearily at Vaan, and then tilted his head again; since he couldn’t trust his weak bangaa eyesight, he obviously relied on his two-part ears. “Why keep the bait when ye’ve landed the fish? We cut her loose on the way here and then off she ran, crying like a babe!”

His guttural laughter switched to a gasp of pain when Lamont unexpectedly chucked the nethicite sample at his head. It bounced off with a solid _thwack._ The child darted forward, scooping up his nethicite before dashing down the mine shafts.

Daina swore, ripping the osafune out of its sheath. There was no way out but through. Balthier knocked the dazed Ba’Gamnan to the ground, pelting after Lamont. Fran leaped right over the snarling bangaa, nimble as a bunny. Vaan, Daina, and Basch gave chase.

“After them!” Ba’Gamnan roared from the ground.

“We’ll not be able to take them all!” Balthier yelled. Lamont had already vanished.

“Then leave them to me,” Basch said, drawing his sword.

Vaan and Daina followed his lead and turned to face the bounty hunters. The two knights and the boy waited with swords drawn. The four bangaa, fanning out, surrounded them. Then Basch produced a mote from his pocket that glowed liquid blue; when he threw it, it cast an aquara spell that smacked into Ba’Gamnan’s three cohorts and nearly drowned them. Taking his cue, Daina and Vaan both slung their own rudimentary motes of air and darkness, utilizing the trapped Mist from the unmined magicite to cast the spells, before all three of them charged in with their blades. Only Ba’Gamnan escaped damage by leaping away on his strong, bandy legs. He circled around and smashed through Daina’s belated defense, bowling her over with his larger mass.

She was up again in an instant, striking at Ba’Gamnan, who infuriatingly blocked each blow with his chainsaw lance, the blade whirring inches from her face.

At that moment, Vaan and Basch executed a perfect synchronized attack. One of the other bangaa fell, cut open to his gizzard.

“Bwagi!” the female squealed in terror. She turned tail and fled. Two down, two to go.

“Gijuk?” Ba’Gamnan asked, squinting around. “What’s happening?”

“Rinok’s scarpered, the silly wench!” Gijuk snarled. He kept snarling, backing away from Basch and Vaan, who moved to flank him. “Bwagi’s dead, brother.”

“Then bring him back!” Ba’Gamnan roared. He pulled up short, mouth open as if tasting the air. Daina’s osafune whipped upward, catching him in his bristly chin.

“Confound ye!” he howled. He stumbled backward, clawed fingers clutching at his bleeding chin. “I will have my pound of flesh yet, Balthier!”

With that, he ran, Gijuk staggering after him, supporting the weight of the recently revived Bwagi.

Daina and the others escaped in the opposite direction. They fled down the long mine shafts from every undead defender and towering, two-legged, tortoise-shelled slaven – they didn’t have time to slay the crocodile-headed monsters if they meant to overtake Lamont. They caught up with Fran and Balthier, but only because the sky pirates had stopped running and were crouched at the entrance to the mines. Balthier grabbed Vaan before he could step into the sunlight.

There, in Lhusu Square, Lamont approached a group of waiting people, which included the unknown judge, Marquis Ondore, some hume soldiers and the two bottlebrush-tailed revs, and a very small-looking, close-to-tears Penelo. The judge saw the boy first.

“I see you’ve been out walking without the company of your cortege, Lord Larsa,” he observed.

Vaan struggled against Balthier, trying to get to Penelo, but the sky pirate held him fast and out of sight of the Imperials.

Gesturing at Penelo, at her blonde pigtails with the feathers tied into the ends, the judge said, “We caught her wandering out of the mines. You must take care with such undesirables about.”

“I was _kidnapped_ _–_ _”_ Penelo fired up, but she flinched when the judge barked, “Silence!”

The child that had given them the name _Lamont_ frowned at the judge. “If it is a crime to wander on one’s own, then I, too, am guilty.” He turned to the handsome, white-haired noble. “Marquis. I trust that your estate can accommodate another guest?”

“Why not?” said Ondore smoothly. He had the kind of dignified face that looked perpetually amused with the world around it, brows lifted, eyes at half mast, a crooked smile tucked along one cheek.

“Judge Ghis, I shall heed your counsel,” the boy went on. “I will not travel unaccompanied any longer.” With that, he grabbed Penelo’s hand, and the two of them trotted off together.

“What’s Penelo doing?” Vaan fumed when Balthier’s hands finally dropped. He turned helplessly to Daina. “And what’s the deal with that Lamont?”

She opened her mouth, but Balthier beat her to it. “That’s no ‘Lamont.’ Larsa Ferrinas Solidor. Fourth son to Emperor Gramis, and brother to Vayne.”

“What? That kid?”

Fran put a hand on her hip. “Do not worry,” she said. “I believe he will treat her well.”

“Nobody knows men like Fran does,” Balthier said with a devilish smirk.

As Vaan gazed bemusedly at Fran, Basch changed the subject. “Our purposes lead the same way: to Ondore. We must find means to approach him.”

“The marquis is channeling money to organizations opposing the Empire. We’ll start there,” Balthier said.

Daina nodded in agreement, no longer questioning Balthier’s apparent knowledge of everything happening in Ivalice. She crossed her arms thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I’m something of a non-entity. Since the Resistance began two years ago, it has spread beyond our – that is, Vossler and Amalia’s – direct management. I do not expect that the anti-Imperial elements here in Bhujerba will willingly speak with me without proof of my allegiance. We need something a little larger than my name to gain their ear.”

“Marquis Ondore announced my execution two years ago,” Basch said slowly. “If news of my survival were to spread, the marquis may find his position compromised.”

Balthier nodded, apparently pleased with Basch’s train of thought. “The men he’s been funding bear little love for the Empire. They won’t be thrilled to discover that the rumors of your death were, in fact, greatly exaggerated. If we were to raise a clamor to that effect, we might just get their attention.”

After discussing the particulars of their plan, they sent Vaan off to raise the clamor. The rest withdrew into the shadows to wait for what prey their lure would fetch.

* * *

“Look, something’s happening,” Daina murmured, sequestered in an empty alley with Balthier. The sky pirate straightened alertly.

Vaan, who had scuttled through three districts yelling things like, “I am Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg!” and “Basch lives!” to every Bhujerban he saw, now found himself the center of a large, chattering group of miners, shopkeepers, civilians, and parijanahs. One parijanah in particular, made distinct by his missing tour-guide smile and augmented by a gray-skinned bangaa looming over his shoulder, moved in close to him.

“You, boy.” Bhujerban accent, words spoken by a glib hume tongue. The parijanah. “You will come with us.”

Whatever might have been Vaan’s reply, it was lost when the bangaa closed a clawed hand around Vaan’s bicep and lifted the young Dalmascan onto his toes.

“Let’s be off,” Balthier said unconcernedly, his gaze trained across the street. Fran and Basch nodded at him from their hiding spot. When Daina and Balthier stepped into the flow of people to follow Vaan and his escorts, the viera and the knight slid smoothly in as well, several paces back.

Interestingly, the parijanah led them to Bhujerba’s most popular pub, the Cloudborne. With so many miners out of work that day, its patrons spilled out of the double entrances, drinks in hand, to mingle drunkenly in the street. With Balthier’s help, Daina shouldered her way to the back of the overcrowded pub. Cocking his head at her, Balthier pushed experimentally on the door concealed behind a wall hanging. To her surprise, it opened.

A gruff voice floated out to them.

“This is the one, Havharo. Says he’s Captain Basch he does.”

An amused male voice, presumably Havharo’s, answered. “He would sooner pass for the king.”

“I knew he weren’t no captain!” the first voice whined. Probably the bangaa, who had been wearing a shiny golden blindfold. “That was a mean trick to be playing.”

Fran and Basch scanned the dining room, searching for a trap, but no one in the pub took notice of them as they hovered by the hidden door. Daina bent to listen once more.

“If at trickery it ended,” Havharo was saying, “it would end well enough. But why this boy, and why Captain Ronsenburg? An explanation is due, and I will hear it. The Empire’s hounds grow passing bold indeed.”


	4. Interlude, part three

Balthier crossed into the back room with Fran on his heels. Loudly, he said, “A shame if they learnt the marquis trafficked with the likes of you. Agents masquerading as guides. A hideout at the back of a tavern. Not exactly earning high marks for originality, are we?”

Daina entered next, and every gaze in the room zeroed in on her. She looked unflinchingly at the man seated at the table, Havharo, and the woman leaning possessively on his shoulder. They were Resistance. So was she. She put her hand on the osafune’s hilt.

“Wait!” Havharo said, but then Basch marched in, and the Bhujerban crossed his arms, leaning back meditatively. “So Basch fon Ronsenburg does yet live.”

They had a story to relate, quite a long one. Basch and Daina shared the telling. Vaan fidgeted as the afternoon wore on, obviously bored, and even Balthier seemed anxious to leave, though it had been his idea to seek help from these people. Eventually, the magicite in the chandelier was lit, and the green glass cast a glow over the room.

Havharo grinned over his empty ale cup. “I knew there must be more to it, but to find you at the end of this tale . . . Ah, to see the marquis’s face when he learns of it.”

“I should like nothing more,” Basch said. “I would meet him, and see for myself.”

Slyly, Havharo leaned back in his chair. He spoke over his shoulder. “How say you, my lord?”

Out of the shadows strode one of the rev valets, and Daina started – she hadn’t seen his yellow-bearded, squashed, leonine face until then.

“There is little to be said,” he said, his deep voice half a purr. “I shall arrange a meeting with the marquis. We shall expect you at the estate.”

* * *

Daina had never been introduced to Amalia’s uncle, who was brother to Amalia’s late mother. She knew Ondore only by the gift of secrecy his memoirs had granted them the night they had fled Rabanastre two years ago. Since then, there had been no direct contact with Bhujerba. A sainikah escorted her and the others into a frugal drawing room, avoiding a life-sized statue of a griffin in the center. There, behind a large, triangular desk, sat Marquis Ondore in his high-collared coat. Daina waited respectfully back with Fran while Basch took his place in front of the desk for the interview.

“Sir Basch fon Ronsenburg,” Ondore said, his expression a mixture of resigned and amused. “It was not so very long ago that I announced you had been executed.”

“And that is the only reason I draw breath,” Basch acknowledged.

Ondore sighed. “So you are the sword he’s strung above my head. Vayne has left not a thing to chance.” He fixed his gaze unsmilingly on the captain. “And?”

“A leader of the Resistance has fallen into Imperial hands,” Basch said. “A woman by the name of Amalia. I would rescue her, but I need your help.”

“This Resistance leader – this Amalia,” Ondore said slowly, playing along for the benefit of Balthier, Fran, and Vaan. “She must be very important.”

Basch said nothing, though he held his fist over his heart and bowed.

“You understand I’ve my position to consider,” Ondore said, lacing his gloved fingers.

What was he saying? Daina frowned, ducking her chin so her lily-blonde hair would cover her face. He’d mentioned something about a sword, one held by Vayne. Perhaps . . . it had been _Vayne_ who had compelled the marquis to announce Basch’s execution and then imprisoned the former knight alive to keep Ondore, and the Lhusu Mines, under control. If that were so, and Basch was now free . . .

“Would you let us see Larsa?” Vaan asked, jerking Daina out of her thoughts. “He’s got my friend with him.”

The marquis blinked at him and then said, “I’m afraid you’re too late. Lord Larsa’s cortege has already rejoined the Imperial detachment. I am told they will depart for Rabanastre upon the arrival of the fleet this eventide.”

Balthier collared Vaan to keep him from rushing out of the room. They struggled, pushing Daina and Fran apart. Basch had not moved.

“What are we waiting for?” Vaan exclaimed.

“For you to calm down,” grunted Balthier.

“Captain Ronsenburg,” Ondore said loudly. “Surely the exigencies of position are not lost on you. Why indeed, you should find the enemy’s chains . . . an easy burden to bear.”

A pause. Basch turned to face them, and his expression –

“Wait!” Balthier yelled in dawning comprehension, shoving Vaan away.

“Sorry,” Basch said in his rough voice. “Can’t be helped.”

“No!” Daina shouted, jumping toward him, but she wasn’t close enough to stop him.

He drew his sword and pointed it at the marquis.

“Summon the guard!” Ondore commanded, composedly getting to his feet.

A valet opened the door, and sainikah flooded the room. Daina fought them off, but without the help of her osafune, which she refused to draw on non-Imperials, they quickly pinned her arms and forced her to her knees. Iron cuffs snapped closed on her wrists.

“Abyss take you!” she cried. “There has got to be a better way than this!”

“They’re to be taken to Judge Ghis,” Ondore said coolly.

* * *

Daina had never been so angry in her life. She had sung to that abominable man – actually helped him to sleep! – and what had he done to thank her? Turned them over to the Empire. Here she was, bound in chains – again – and herded onto the Dreadnought _Leviathan_ like . . . like a common thief!

Well. Maybe not a common thief. The _Leviathan_ was the flagship of the 8th Royal Fleet, commanded by Judge Ghis. It was hardly possible to be tried by a higher power, unless by Emperor Gramis himself. Somehow, she did not feel flattered. If her current luck held steady, she might end up dumped right back in Nalbina. All because she’d pitied a fellow knight who’d lost his time.

Once her hands were free, she decided, she’d punch his lights out but good.

Chained together as they were, the five captives shuffled where their guards led them, straight onto _Leviathan’s_ bridge. Only then, when there was no hope of reaching either the floating island of Dorstonis or the two nearest land continents, Valendia or Kerwon, were their ankle shackles removed.

“The prisoners, my lord,” one of the soldiers announced, and Daina sourly looked up.

Two more soldiers flanked Judge Ghis and the fair-haired woman at his side.

_Amalia!_

Stunned into utter uselessness, Daina watched as Amalia, free as a dove, walked up to them. It was a dream. Amalia couldn’t be here, could she? Daina had to be dreaming!

Amalia herself looked like she could be dreaming, her expression as peaceful and lovely as the dawn.

“Majesty –” Basch said, his rough voice going lower with emotion.

Amalia slapped him across the face. Hard. The sharp sound hung in the sterile air. “After what you’ve done!” she seethed. Her voice rose almost to a shout. “How dare you! You’re supposed to be _dead!”_

As if offering her the chance to hit him a second time, Basch slowly turned his head to face her again. His expression was unreadable.

Daina didn’t want to know what he was thinking. He’d put them all in danger to save Ondore’s reputation. Because of what he’d done, Nalbina was still an option for all of them.

So was execution.

Her earlier anger shriveled up like a succulent fruit in the desert, leaving her feeling guilty and wrung out. Amalia had just done what Daina herself had wanted to do, but it felt wrong and undeserved. In desperation, Basch had gone through the farce of threatening Ondore to bring them to Amalia. He had thought only of her.

“Come now, come now,” Judge Ghis chortled, immediately making Daina hate him. He advanced upon Amalia, his helm tilted toward the prisoners. “Have you forgotten your manners? This is hardly the courtesy due the late Princess Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca.”

_“Princess?”_ Vaan blurted.

Balthier and Fran exchanged horrified looks.

Daina winced. She would have preferred them never to learn the truth. The more who knew Amalia’s true identity, the greater the danger she was in. Damn this judge magister to the abyss!

Ghis nodded sagely. “To be sure, she bears no proof of her former station. No different than any mean member of the Insurgence.”

“The Resistance,” Amalia – _Ashe_ – corrected regally, her eyes locked on Basch.

“Without proof, my dear, how is anyone to know that you are who you say you are, and not this charming girl?”

Reeling from this pseudo-reunion with her lady, it took Daina a few moments to realize Judge Ghis was talking about her. She and Ashe were close in age, their coloring and bearing similar, and, if Daina’s long hair were bobbed like Ashe’s, perfect for a cuckoo deception. She grimaced up at the judge in disgust, and then glanced at her lady. Ashe’s mouth tightened, and Daina felt sick. Nothing was welcoming about Ashe’s demeanor at all. She looked furious.

“The consul asks the ministry of the disthroned royal family in restoring peace to Dalmasca,” Ghis continued, sweeping away from Daina, cloak fluttering. He drew Ashe’s disbelieving attention after him. “Those who foster instability and unrest, who claim royal blood without proof, they shall meet their fate at the gallows. There are no exceptions.”

“I will not play puppet to Vayne,” Ashe said acidly.

Abruptly, Basch spoke. To Ashe, he said, “King Raminas entrusted me with a task. Should the time come, he bade me give you something of great importance. It is your birthright: the Dusk Shard.” Then, he raised his voice for Ghis. “It will warrant the quality of her blood. Only I know where to find it.”

“Wait.” Ashe’s eyes narrowed. Her chest rose and fell, but she lost the battle with her fury and shouted, “You took my father’s life! Why spare mine now? You would have me live in shame!”

“If that is your duty: yes,” he said brutally.

Daina tried to catch her breath. When had she forgotten that Basch had been framed for the assassination of Ashe’s father? When had she forgotten that Ashe had not yet learned of Vayne’s hand in the assassination?

When had Daina started trusting Basch, as she had been used to trust Vossler?

“Stop being so stubborn!” Vaan burst out, running up to Ashe as if she were still an equal. As if she’d ever been an equal. “Keep on like this, and you’re gonna get us all killed.”

“Don’t interrupt!” Ashe snarled at him.

A dreadful silence followed. Vaan backed up, hurt written all over his face. Then his expression went as blank as new paper.

“What?” he whispered. He dug around in his sash as if something was burning him.

In Vaan’s hands, an uncut orange crystal – the same one he had offered to Balthier in the Sandsea – began to glow like flame encased in glass. Ashe gasped.

Basch’s voice seemed to come out of the depths of a grave. “Vaan. That stone.”

“It was in the palace treasury,” he said helplessly.

“Well, well,” Balthier murmured at Daina’s side.

Ghis broke into laughter.

“Splendid!” he cried. He descended gleefully on the flabbergasted Vaan. “You’ve brought the stone with you! This spares us a great deal of trouble.”

“Don’t give it to him!” Ashe cried.

Ghis grabbed her elbow and hauled her roughly to the side, holding out his other hand to Vaan.

Vaan turned frightened eyes on Daina, who returned his gaze, equally scared. Vaan silently appealed to Balthier and Fran next. The two sky pirates nodded at Vaan to give up the stone. There was no other choice.

Vaan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You have to promise,” he said bravely to Ghis, holding out the stone. “No executions.”

“A judge’s duty is to the law,” Ghis drawled. Daina was glad she couldn’t see his gloating face when he palmed the stone. Lazily, he ordered, “Take them away. Lady Ashe is to be quartered separately.”

Once again, as the soldiers rounded them up and forced them off the bridge, Daina felt Ashe’s disapproval like a physical, arctic wind, sealing her up in a pillar of ice, preventing any positive action. Stumbling along with her captors, she fought the tears that threatened to tear her apart.

* * *

Then anger reared up to dry her eyes. She marched beside Fran, neither of them speaking, Vaan somewhere behind them, Balthier and Basch bringing up the rear.

Fran’s ear flicked.

“So you were carrying it all along,” Basch said wearily. “The Fates jest.”

“Tell these Fates of yours to leave me out,” Balthier groused.

“Keep quiet!” barked one of the rear soldiers.

Basch ignored him. “There was nothing else that I could do. You know that.”

“Oh, I understand.” Balthier heaved a sigh; Fran’s ear, rising tall from her filigreed, black iron headdress, flicked again. “Honor, duty, and all that. I still can’t believe that was the princess.”

“I said keep quiet!”

The soldier attempted to force Balthier’s silence by jabbing at the sky pirate with his spear from behind. As he did, Balthier and Basch took one step apart. The younger man grabbed the shaft of the spear and yanked the soldier off his feet. Then, when the soldier stumbled forward between them, Basch brought his iron cuffs down on his unprotected neck. Swiftly, Fran lashed out with her long leg, sending another soldier to the floor with a tremendous crash. The third soldier, however, was incapacitated by the final Imperial, who then removed his helm.

“Vossler!” Daina cried, and he grinned.

Basch raised his eyebrows at his one-time friend. “The marquis has been busy.”

“Not lightly did I beg his aid,” Vossler said, his grin fading. He reached for Basch’s cuffs, speaking low and quick. “Listen, it has been a full two years. I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden. I doubted friend and foe alike. I could trust nobody.”

“You did your duty. And mine for me.”

“I’m getting her out,” Vossler said, moving on to Balthier. “I need your help.”

“Of course,” Basch said.

Daina said nothing.

_I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden . . . I could trust nobody._

Had he honestly said that? Right in front of her? The more the words repeated in her head, the angrier Daina became. Freed of the cuffs, she stomped through the _Leviathan’s_ corridors with the others, avoiding the intruder alarm light webs and the patrolling Imperials. Once, she jerked Vaan backward before he could blunder through a one-way trip alarm, having seen the black lenses of the motion sensor nodes peering from the ceiling when he had not. Her mind, however, buzzed like a trapped antares mantis.

Vossler. _I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden . . ._ But he hadn’t done it alone. Daina had worked together with him, taking care of the things for her lady that a man simply couldn’t do. The three of them, in complete confidence.

_. . . I could trust nobody._

Was that why he had sent her with Basch? Had made zero attempts to contact her since? Because, in truth, he didn’t trust her?

The burn of her temper kept her blade sharp. When they entered the central brig access and six Imperials accosted them, she cut down the magus and whirled on one of the minor judges, sending him to his death without either of them laying spell or weapon on her. The fight didn’t take long after that.

Vaan dropped into a crouch at the end of the battle, searching the bodies. “One of them should have a brig key,” he explained. He held it up in triumph.

“Good lad,” Balthier said approvingly. He clapped Vaan on the shoulder, and Vaan grinned.

“Let’s go,” Daina said in a monotone, sheathing the osafune. She missed the questioning looks they sent her way.

Then, at long, long last, they invaded the brig, opened a cell door, and discovered Ashe, sitting pensively on the bench.

She looked up.

Daina fell upon her, all knightly honor and dignity flung to the four winds. After a moment, Ashe’s slender arms circled Daina’s shoulders. The two young women held each other tightly.

“You weren’t supposed to come,” Ashe said, sounding resigned. “I meant you to be safe.”

Daina wanted to laugh, to cry, to _sing._ So that was why. All the coldness, the stranger’s eyes – it had been an act.

“You aren’t allowed to worry about me,” she said in what she meant to be a stern tone, but her relief made it wobble. “You have all of Dalmasca to protect. Permit me to do my duty and protect you.”

Vossler’s clipped voice broke in on them, separating Daina from her lady. “You are unharmed.”

“Vossler!” Ashe shot to her feet. “I –”

She stopped, eyelids fluttering, and then pitched forward.

Vossler caught her. “Majesty!”

“It’s nothing,” Ashe said faintly, righting herself. She stood alone, gathering her imperiousness about her like a coat. In a stronger voice, she added, “I’ll be fine.”

Daina hovered behind her lady. After all that Ashe had been through, it was no wonder if she was overwhelmed. Daina purposely didn’t look at Vossler, but in avoiding his eye, she caught Basch’s.

So did Ashe. Her eyes narrowed to slits of stormy gray. _“You.”_

“Come on, come on!” Vaan called from the hallway. Daina caught a glimpse of him fairly dancing with impatience. “Let’s go! What are you waiting for? Penelo’s still out there!”

No one paid him any attention. Basch and Ashe remained locked in a stare-down, she projecting an aura of venom, he as impervious and immovable as a rock. Anxiety flooded Daina. She wished they would stop. She didn’t want – what? Her lady to hate Basch?

Why did it matter so much?

“We should hurry.” Balthier, calm and sardonic. “They won’t be long.”

Vossler got between the ex-princess and the ex-knight. “We will talk later,” he said, his flinty eyes brooking no argument.

No sooner had they exited the brig, however, than a wail that pierced Daina’s eardrums began. The lights went off and plunged them into red-lit twilight. Armed Imperials flooded the corridors, some leading giant, slavering mastiffs, and blocked their way.

“Majesty,” Basch said, gentle as always. “We will cut you a path.”

Ashe glared at him. “I will not place my trust in the sword of a traitor!”

“Yet trust his sword we must,” Vossler argued, “traitor or no. I see no other way. We track back, commandeer a ship, and make our escape.”

He met all of their gazes as he said this, reverting to his old role as a captain and leader of the Resistance. Smoldering, Daina looked away. Did he trust her, or not?

The others ran off, Balthier and Vaan leading the pack. Daina prepared to follow her lady, but when Vossler spoke to Basch in a low voice, curiosity got the better of her. She lingered to listen.

“Her Majesty cannot abide weakness, least of all in herself,” Vossler said. “We must make her confront the reality of our plight.”

Daina clenched her fists and stalked off, pretending she hadn’t heard. What Vossler had said of Ashe was true, the first part, but Daina didn’t believe for one second that Ashe didn’t understand their situation. Of all of them, Lady Ashe probably understood the most.

It was Vossler, not Ashe, who had lost sight of reality.

* * *

There was no way to avoid fighting, not with the alarms screaming fit to wake the dead. Imperial soldiers poured toward them like a river of steel. The carpeted corridors were stained red with emergency lighting and blood. Daina couldn’t care less because Lady Ashe fought right by her side. Elation made the osafune as light as holy magick. They left a trail of death clear across the _Leviathan._

Balthier, however, complained that the sirens were too irritating to bear. He ferreted out the security terminals and shut off the alarms, resetting the system to its default waiting mode. The ensuing silence was more deafening than the noise had been.

“That’s not permanent,” he informed them, fixing his cuff. “Time is short.”

No one bothered to argue. They burst into an atrium with a dark marble floor polished to a glassy sheen. A pair of kids, a black-haired boy and a blonde girl, came sprinting into the atrium from their right, their boots slapping on the slippery floor. Daina slid right into Vaan when he skidded to a surprised halt. Somehow, they both managed to stay standing, and then –

“Vaan!”

Penelo shot across the atrium and threw herself into Vaan’s waiting arms.

“It’s okay,” he said into her hair. “We’re all right.”

The boy, Prince Larsa, approached them when the two teens broke apart. “Ghis knows you’ve escaped,” he said. “You must hurry.”

At this, Ashe and Vossler exchanged looks. Daina looked at Basch. He didn’t seem surprised to see the prince on the dreadnought. Larsa walked up to Vossler, who still wore an Imperial’s armor.

“You are Captain Azelas,” he said. Then, not waiting for Vossler’s assenting nod, “You will follow me. We must reach the airships before they do.”

“You would let us leave knowing who we are?” Vossler asked. He returned his greatsword to his back.

Larsa nodded, his sweet face shining. He smiled at the Dalmascan princess. “Lady Ashe. By all rights, you ought not even to exist. That you and Captain Ronsenburg were made to appear dead is like a hidden thread laid bare.” His earnestness unreeled like a fishing line, dangling the lure of his beliefs before them, drawing them closer. “Your actions hereafter will pull at that thread, and we will see that it unravels. This is our chance. We must see this through, and get to the bottom of it. I believe ‘tis for the good of Dalmasca, and the good of the Empire.”

Ashe drew in a deep breath, her eyes sweeping over them: the orphans from Dalmasca, her three loyal knights, and two unallied sky pirates. She nodded. “Very well, then.”

“Thanks, ‘Lamont,’ ” Vaan said, grinning.

“I must apologize,” Larsa said, struggling with his own precocious smile. Then, he turned to Penelo. “For you.”

He handed her the blue nethicite sample and closed his hands over hers. “May it bring you good fortune.”

“Thanks,” Penelo breathed, her face suffused with a flattered smile, while Vaan watched curiously.

“Let us go,” Larsa said to Vossler.

Vossler nodded at Basch as if confirming something, but Basch looked impassively back. Then Vossler and the child went in one direction, looking innocuously like an Archadian prince and his Imperial escort, while Basch and Daina led the others in the opposite direction.

“How shall we proceed?” Fran asked. Her ponytail streamed out behind her as they ran.

“The port launch is closest,” Daina said, “where we boarded. We should make for it, and hope that Vossler can get us that ship.”

“Aye,” Basch agreed.

It didn’t take long to reach the port launch unaccosted. Perhaps that was why Daina retained the sense of security Larsa’s declaration of alliance had afforded them. She saw their escape as concluded, and actually leaving the _Leviathan_ a formality. However, when they got there, Judge Ghis was waiting for them.

As one, they slowed and then stopped. Ghis betrayed not a flicker of movement. His posture said it all – he had won, and he had the time to savor his victory.

Behind the party, three more swordsmen materialized and blocked the exit. Daina met Balthier’s eye. He thumbed the safety off his vega firearm, his head cocked toward the rear. She nodded minutely, reading his intent. Fran’s graceful hands hung lax at her sides, but Daina knew the viera could draw her bow and loose two arrows before her partner could lift his vega and squeeze the trigger.

From across the bay, Ghis spoke to Ashe. “Such a great shame. I must confess, I thought you were the one who would help us restore peace to Dalmasca. No matter. We hold the proof of your royal lineage. A maid of –” the helm seemed to briefly turn to Daina, and he put heavy emphasis on his next words, “passing resemblance will serve our purposes now. As for you, my dear . . .”

He stretched out one hand. A ball of magickal red light formed above it. “The Empire requires you no more!”

With the last word, he cast his spell.

It roared, as hungry as a furnace, a whirlwind of Mist and death. Daina braced herself in front of Ashe, preparing herself for the impact even as her mind shrieked that it was no use.

Then, something strange happened. The spiraling red light elongated like a funnel of water sucked down a drain, and the full force of the killing magick vanished, directly into the shining blue crystal in Penelo’s trembling hands.

“What was that?” the girl gasped.

“The nethicite,” Balthier murmured. The hume-made crystal twinkled benignly, giving no hint of the power it had just absorbed.

“Your Majesty does not disappoint!” Ghis bellowed as if he meant the exact opposite. He drew his weapons. “Ever quick to spurn an honorable surrender, as was your father.”

“You know nothing of my father!” Ashe cried. She readied her zwill blade and charged the judge.

Balthier wheeled and fired. The shot tore into the lead swordsman behind them and jerked him off balance. Daina’s osafune danced in, stabbing through one of the weak points of the Imperial’s armor. His sword dropped from nerveless fingers. She severed his helmed head next.

Fran joined the fray, her arrows singing murder from her aevis killer bow. The remaining swordsmen fell in short order, resembling cactoids more than humes.

“Stay where you are!” Daina shouted at the Dalmascans as she ran to close the distance to Ashe. Vaan obeyed, shielding Penelo from the battle – but it was to her that Daina had directed the command, for the petite girl was clutching a dagger. A dagger! A blade that tiny would do no more than get her killed against a fully armored, full-grown man like Ghis.

As it was, Ashe was in trouble. Basch took the brunt of the damage, but the judge swatted him aside with a steel boot to his sternum and brought both his broadsword and a wind-and-fire wheel down on Ashe. The wheel was shaped like a spiked lady’s fan, covering Ghis’s knuckles in an eight-inch frill of steel. He punched hard. Ashe’s buckler caved, crushing her arm. She cried out.

A katana was light and quick. Daina leaped into the fight, slashing at the judge’s legs. With an awful, earsplitting screech, the osafune’s edge cut through his red trousers and scraped against his greaves. Daina swore, having hoped to hamstring him, at least. She managed to block the broadsword on the upswing, but the wind-and-fire wheel caught the osafune, its long spikes locking with the katana’s blade.

Ghis wrenched the wheel to the side, and the osafune shattered.

* * *

With her broken sword’s hilt clutched in her fist, Daina dropped and rolled. Ghis’s broadsword smashed to the floor where she had been standing. She came out of the roll on her knees, painfully aware of how helpless she was without a weapon, for she was no mage.

Ghis was laughing.

“Use the Mist!” Fran called. Bewildered, Daina looked to her. Use it how? “The nethicite is sated – it will not interfere!”

Then she realized that Fran had not been talking to her. Basch, a palm pressed to his bleeding chest, sheathed his sword and began a spell of such magnitude that his entire body glowed. Daina got to her feet in a hurry, for she saw Balthier and Fran doing the same, the two humes and the viera hedging Ghis in a triangle of power. His laughter died.

Daina rushed over to Ashe. The two women scrambled out of the line of fire before Basch, Fran, and Balthier unleashed their quickening chain. Basch led the attack, calling dark green non-light between his palms. He hurled it at Ghis. It drew raw Mist after it like a riptide. Then, each building off this tsunami of power, Balthier and Fran added their own spells until the Mist blossomed out of their control. The raging cataclysm engulfed the judge and squeezed the strength out of him. Unfortunately, it did not kill him.

The quickening dissipated. Ghis staggered drunkenly. He tugged his helm off, which revealed dark, wooly, receding hair and deceptively droopy eyes. He fell face first to the floor, unconscious.

Vossler, sweaty and out of breath, burst into the hangar. He did not spare the vanquished judge a single glance. “We’ve secured an atomos. Come!”

* * *

Daina salvaged the green tassel when she discarded the osafune’s remains.

Back in Bhujerba, she yawned as she walked past Penelo and Balthier, their words drifting meaninglessly by her.

“Balthier, your handkerchief. I thought you might want it back.”

“I shall wear it close to my heart.”

It was somewhere between midnight and dawn. The stolen atomos skiff sat abandoned in the deserted aerodrome, the royal fleet had departed for a destination unknown, and Daina shook her hair off her face as she joined Vossler, Ashe, and Basch. Vossler had shed his Imperial disguise and stood once again in Dalmascan gear, linen shorts and plated leather.

Basch’s amber eyes flicked to her, and she lowered her own to her feet. It was late – early – and she was tired. If he wanted to stare at her, fine. She was beyond caring what he thought at the moment. Ashe was safe. That was all that mattered.

Ashe, predictably, was still going full steam ahead.

“Perhaps you forget all that Ondore has wrought,” she said.

“I do not forget, Majesty,” Basch said in his rough, low voice.

Daina shivered. Oh, she cared what he thought, all right.

Oblivious, he continued: “It was by his counsel, dangerous though it may have been, that we were able to free you. You must meet with him, Your Highness, and give ear to his words. He may act in league with the Empire, but his heart is not.”

So to Ondore, they went, all except Vossler, who left Ashe with the unhelpful words, “I would have Basch remain at your side. Doubt him you may, but I measure his loyalty to Dalmasca no less than my own.” He went, as he said, to seek other ways to restore Dalmasca’s independence, and would return for her at a later date.

Ashe asked her uncle for Bhujerba’s aid, but the marquis disappointed her, bitterly.

“Suppose for a moment you were to defeat Vayne, what then?” he asked. “You cannot simply rebuild your kingdom with the only proof of your birthright stolen. The Gran Kiltias on Bur-Omisace cannot recognize you as the rightful heir without it. You may yet be a princess, but without proof of your identity, you are powerless. You will remain with me. We do nothing ‘til the time is right.”

* * *

“Tell me why you are with him.”

Sitting at the vanity with her damp hair in her lap, Daina looked at her lady’s reflection in the three-part mirror. Ashe sat on one of the marquis’s borrowed beds, tired and defeated, staring out of the window. Backlit by the dawn, shadows sketched her regal profile against the sky. It didn’t surprise Daina that Ashe’s blood came from people who lived among clouds and purified sunshine. Empyrean. The word suited her perfectly.

They’d had their much-needed baths and their change of clothes, at Balthier’s request (“Incidentally, what is the going rate for rescuing princesses these days? Food would be a start – the good stuff, mind you.”). Daina knew that the sky pirate only acted the selfish fool. He had given both the marquis and the princess the needed excuse to end their stalemate, withdraw, and recoup.

But Ashe wasn’t asking about Balthier. Daina set her hairbrush down, careful not to disturb the pots of make-up and hairpins scattered across the vanity’s top. She took a deep, slow breath, and then told her tale. She kept her narration simple, leaving nothing out. Nalbina. Judge Gabranth. The oubliette and the crow’s cage. The truths laid bare in Barheim. Vossler charging her to be the Resistance’s eyes. Asking for help from the sky pirates and rescuing Penelo. Basch’s desperate gamble.

“He risked us all to save you, my lady,” Daina finished at last. She tied off the end of her braid. When she tossed it over her shoulder, the tip came to rest on the seat of her chair.

“He never spoke of his family to me. I wonder how much of this my father knew,” Ashe murmured. She sighed, and then rubbed her temples, wincing. “So you ask for my trust on his behalf?”

“I do,” Daina said. She closed her eyes.

Mistake. Against the red-tinged darkness, Daina saw a flash of wheat-gold. Sunlight, probably, the precise shade of his bright hair. Her eyes snapped open, her heart pounding.

To her consternation, she found Ashe watching her. Her face went hot.

Ashe set her elbows on her knees, laced her fingers, and put her hands in front of her mouth. “I’ve learned to rely on your judgment,” she said. “It is sound, and not easily given. However, I think there’s more to all of this than simply deciding to trust.”

There was. Why hadn’t Daina realized it before?

She could see it now that everything was over, their coup d’état failed, her escape from Nalbina attained, Ashe rescued, and all options at an end. They were adrift, and her mind was free to show her what had happened in the last two days.

Daina Praeities, lady knight of House Nabradia, was falling in love with Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg.

* * *

A tumult of feelings constricted her breathing the way a sudden shift in the wind could. It delighted her whenever she saw him, it confused her whenever he looked her way, and it irritated her when others stole his attention. His voice, so terribly gentle, concealed the keen-edged core of steel in him that made her yearn to follow wherever he went. Was this what it meant to fall in love?

Basch was a more experienced fighter. His skills, superior to her own. A true knight, he was steadfast, intelligent, and unshakable.

He was someone she could look up to. Someone she could love without compromising herself.

“It doesn’t matter,” Daina said at last. A single tear made a track down her cheek. She brushed it off, silently asking the others to stay where they were. “I give you my verdict on the side of truth, as I have seen it, and nothing else. The final decision is yours, my lady.”

“I can’t make that decision right now,” Ashe said, her thoughts very differently engaged. “I need proof of my claim, and there is one if only I could get to it.”

Shame washed through Daina. Her duty was to help her lady reclaim her throne and restore Dalmasca’s independence. To accomplish that, she had sworn to protect Ashe with her life. Especially now that Vossler had essentially abandoned them. She had no business worrying about love!

“The Dusk Shard was only one of three legacies,” Ashe went on. “It and the Midlight Shard are lost to us, but the Dawn Shard will serve my purpose just as well.”

“If I may offer one other bit of advice,” Daina said. The osafune’s absence on her hip made her feel unbalanced, reckless. All she could think of was getting away from the source of her distraction and shame. “You are correct. We cannot sit here and wait.”

“What would you have me do?” Ashe asked, but not angrily. “Uncle Halim holds us here like birds in a cage.”

Vossler’s words to Basch rang through Daina’s head, and she grinned as she repeated Basch’s response: “Even caged birds need wings.”

Ashe frowned up at her, and then understanding lightened her storm-gray eyes. “What better time than now to learn to fly?” she asked.

Daina grinned. “My thoughts exactly.”

The two women stole through the marquis’s estate, exited the grounds, and headed once more for the aerodrome. It was full day, and the aerodrome was busy. Using the crowds, Ashe and Daina snuck into the _Strahl’s_ private hangar undetected. Nono was nowhere to be seen. Daina was glad. She hadn’t wanted to threaten the little moogle into compliance.

Unfortunately, Vaan interrupted them before they got the engines started. His incredulous voice almost stopped Daina’s heart.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “This is Balthier’s ship.”

Daina swore under her breath. Of course, Vaan was there. He was so enamored with airships in general, and the _Strahl_ in particular, that he’d probably been ogling it in the hangar and watched them board.

“I’m going to retrieve the Dawn Shard,” Ashe said, poking, so far unsuccessfully, at the controls. The fuel gauge refused to light up. “It’s the proof that I need. I know where it’s hidden. I’ll return his airship later.”

“Are you crazy?” Vaan grabbed the back of her seat.

“This is something I have to do!” she yelled at him. Stress and guilt made her shrill. “For myself and all those who have fallen. I will not be made to hide!”

She threw herself back into the seat. “I’ll fight alone if I must.” With that, she returned to analyzing the controls.

“You can’t just go around stealing people’s ships,” Vaan said stubbornly. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to concentrate!”

“Stop it!” Daina slammed her hand onto the radar screen. One thing she had learned from Vossler – if she thought Ashe mistaken, she should say it. “Don’t treat him like that. He’s given us immeasurable aid. His brother is one of those you want to avenge.”

Ashe’s face whitened, except for her cheeks, which burned pink. Daina quickly backpedaled. “Has it not occurred to you that he is one of your people, my lady? Besides, you have me. You will not fight alone!”

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Ashe said, eyes flashing, “and your judgment is too easily given.”

“That’s quite enough, Your Majesty,” Marquis Ondore said, nearly giving Daina her second heart attack in as many minutes. All three teenagers whirled.

Balthier grinned behind a microphone that had all sorts of wires and buttons tacked messily on. “What do you think?” he drawled, holding it up for inspection. “A bit over the top? In my line of work, you never know when something like this might come in handy.” He pushed a button and a red light burned. He spoke in Ashe’s voice: “I’m trying to concentrate!”

Tossing the mike aside, he sauntered up to them in the crowded cockpit, his face coldly serious. “I’m leaving you with the marquis.”

“You can’t,” Ashe begged.

“Trust me, you’re better off staying here.” He folded his arms.

Thinking fast, Ashe blurted, “Suppose you kidnapped me instead. You’re a sky pirate, aren’t you? Then steal me. Is that so much to ask?”

“What do you have that I would want?” he sighed.

“The Dynast-King’s treasure,” she said immediately. “The Dawn Shard is but one of the riches that lie waiting in King Raithwall’s tomb.”

Balthier let out a low, appreciative whistle. He eyed her over his shoulder. “King Raithwall, you say?”

Daina immediately realized what Ashe was offering. Long ago, the gods granted their favor to King Raithwall, who would oversee the subjugation of a territory spanning from Ordalia to Valendia. At what would become his tomb, he forged the Galtean Alliance.

Though he was called the Dynast-King, upon establishing the Alliance, he showed compassion for his people, and disdain for war. A philosophy passed on to his successors, one that would bring peace and prosperity for hundreds of years to follow. It was during this time of peace that the city-states of Archadia and Rozarria, each members of Raithwall's Alliance, took root and flourished.

Raithwall left three relics signifying descent from the Dynast-King. Of these, the Midlight Shard was given to what would become House Nabradia, and the Dusk Shard to Ashe’s ancestors, the founders of Dalmasca. That was the stone Vaan had stolen from the palace treasury. The last of these relics was the Dawn Shard. It remained hidden in the tomb, known only to those of royal blood. Until now.

“Kidnapping royalty is a serious offense,” Basch said drily as he ducked in. “It won’t do much to lower the bounty on your head.”

Daina’s heart somersaulted and went into overdrive.

Balthier smirked at him. “How much is the price on _your_ head these days, I wonder?”

“Allow me to escort you,” Basch said to the flustered Ashe. He looked at Daina as if he knew the idea to filch the _Strahl_ had been hers. The faint smile that wasn’t quite a smile touched his lips.

Daina ducked her head, hiding behind her curtain of hair. She wormed by him to claim a seat in the back before she did something unknightly, like burst out laughing. She’d meant to leave him behind! How noble she had thought herself, how martyr-like, to sacrifice him for Ashe. How stupid! She could no more bear to part with him now than she could from her lady. She did not know how he had come to be there with Balthier. She did not care. All that mattered was that he was with her.

To complete their party, Fran and Penelo sidled in.

“Will you be joining us?” the viera asked Vaan, who lit up like a firework.

“What, are you kidding? I don’t wanna stick around this place.”

“Then I’m coming too!” Penelo cried. She darted to a seat and planted herself in it as if she meant to stay there until she died.

“Penelo?”

“Don’t leave me here,” she pleaded, and Vaan sighed.

“Of course not,” he said.

“Then it’s settled,” Fran said smugly. She turned to Balthier, who ousted Ashe from his seat. “We should leave before the marquis realizes she’s missing. Like proper kidnappers.”

* * *

“Wait,” Vaan said. “We need to go back to Rabanastre.”

Everybody looked at him.

“Absolutely not,” Balthier said.

“We have to. Please, Balthier.” Vaan leaned over his shoulder as the pirate piloted the _Strahl_ into the Westersand. “We have to tell Migelo that Penelo’s all right.”

Seeing her opportunity, Daina spoke up. “I have an errand there as well.”

“I haven’t said I’m landing,” Balthier started, but Fran gave him a sidelong look and he sighed. The airship banked. “Twenty minutes.”

Daina left Ashe in Basch’s care and tailed the other teenagers.

“So when you’re in jagd,” Vaan told Penelo as they hiked toward Rabanastre’s Westgate, pronouncing the word the way all Dalmascans did, _YAHkt,_ “skystones don’t work at all.” He was referring to their upcoming trip to the Jagd Yensa, which lay between the Westersand and the Rozarrian Empire, one of the many uninhabitable regions across Ivalice whose Mist-laden winds and magicite-rich soil interfered with glossair engine operation. “That’s why we gotta hoof it the rest of the way, ya see?”

Penelo grinned. “Happy you get to teach me something for a change?”

“Well, if you want to be a sky pirate, you have to know your – Hey! What do you mean, ‘for a change’?”

They dissolved into playful bickering. Daina didn’t join in. She busily scanned the face of every person they came across in the bazaar, which included the helmed, faceless Imperials. Her likeness, and Vaan’s as well, would be known here, for Vayne Solidor had seen them both the night of the fete. Luckily, no one paid them the slightest attention. They reached Migelo’s Sundries without incident.

The reunion between the bangaa merchant and the two orphans was predictably boisterous. Migelo smothered Penelo in a hug from which she laughingly detached herself. He thanked Vaan and Daina repeatedly in his querulous, booming voice, wringing their hands until their wrists felt like wet noodles. Informing him that they were all going to leave again didn’t go over as well, but he eventually relented and allowed them to restock their supply of potions, antidotes, eye drops, and other restoratives for half price.

“Vaan,” Daina said as they exited the store for the crowds on the street, “I need a weapon shop.”

“That’d be Amal’s. It’s right over this way,” he said, and then ran off.

Daina had never bought anything from Amal; her original katana had been of Nabradian make. She sorted through the katanas set out for sale and settled on a kogarasumaru, which was as close to the kotetsu’s design as she could find. She also selected an ashura, a shorter, straighter ninja sword, the blade of which was infused with dark magicite. She stuck it in her sword belt alongside the kogarasumaru. She was not going to be caught weaponless again.

Then she called Penelo over. “How good are you with that dagger?” she asked.

“It’s served me well so far,” Penelo said shyly. She was a very pretty girl who always seemed on the brink of a laugh, a bit of sunshine, a flower made flesh. In spite of everything that had happened to her, she exuded optimism. No wonder Vaan cared for her so much.

“How about magick?”

Penelo brightened. “I’m better at that. Vaan doesn’t really understand magick spells,” she whispered, giggled, and then finished in a normal tone of voice, “so I’ve been learning them instead.”

“Good.” Daina smiled. “I want you to take this. It will help with your spellcasting.”

The other girl accepted the gilt measure and turned the tool over in her hands curiously. “This will cast a protective shield if I hit one of us with it, won’t it?”

“Yes. Your first focus should be defense and healing, but if a beastie closes with you, go ahead and use your dagger. The better you take care of yourself, the longer the rest of us will last. We’ll be relying on you.”

Penelo beamed, probably pleased that someone, at last, was taking her seriously.

After a quick stop at Yugri’s Magicks for new scrolls, the three teens used one of the free moogling stations to return to the Westgate by teleportation. Then they ran back to the waiting airship. As if Balthier’s impatience translated to his piloting, the _Strahl_ lifted from the sands before they cleared the gangplank, causing Daina and Penelo to tumble into the loading bay. They laughingly helped each other stand, and then Penelo kicked Vaan’s legs out from under him, just because she could. They were still arguing when they rejoined the others in the cockpit.

Feeling much better with a sword at her hip, Daina leaned back in her seat and sang to herself as the Westersand rolled by, the _Strahl’s_ shadow a tiny patch of darkness flitting along beneath them. Balthier brought the _Strahl_ to a hover when they reached a small, valeblossom-filled clearing between high cliffs, and Nono dropped anchor. Hot desert air blasted in when Fran opened the door.

“That was nice,” Vaan said to Daina on his way by her, his eagerness to debark overcoming his appreciation.

Daina laughed. “Thanks,” she said to the empty air.

“It _was_ nice,” Penelo said. She clasped her hands behind her back. “I’ve never heard that song before.”

“It’s Nabradian,” Basch said from behind them.

Daina bit her lip. He was right, of course – but the fact that it had been a love song didn’t make her feel at ease. He just didn’t turn away like other people! Or even look at who he was speaking if he wished to be looking at someone else. Namely, her.

As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Basch escorted Ashe down the gangplank. As a group, they wandered to the edge of the sandsea, a massive, ocher-hued ocean of granulated liquid that faded to blue in the distance, tricking the mind into seeing true water. Rising from the torpid waves, an extensive array of rusting rigs and a series of platforms and bridges marched into the haze. Vaan knelt at the edge of the sandsea, scooping up a handful of the strange waters. Dry granules rolled off his palm.

Balthier spoke to Nono, who pressed a button. With a fizzing sound, the _Strahl_ vanished, her shield camouflage blending perfectly with her surroundings. The last they saw of Nono was his paw, waving goodbye, before the shield blocked him from sight, too.

“Whoa!” Penelo gasped.

Ashe raised delicate eyebrows. “This ‘come in handy’ often?” she asked.

“It’s tough being popular,” Balthier answered with a wicked grin. “Wouldn’t want admirers dropping in while we’re away.” He studied the empty patch of sky where his precious ship hung. “Well now, that’s as far as she goes. We’ll be in the jagd from here onwards.”

“So, where exactly is Raithwall’s tomb?” Penelo asked.

Ashe combed her bangs to the side, her eyes fixed on the horizon. “Across the sandsea, to the Valley of the Dead.”

The Valley of the Dead. It was so named for the many adventurers who had succumbed to the jagd and died there, never to be seen again.

“Far to the west.” Basch pointed. “We must first cross the Ogir-Yensa, and beyond that the Nam-Yensa, before we reach the tomb. An expanse of desert larger still than all of Dalmasca. We must pace ourselves. If we grow tired, we stop and take rest.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m tougher than I look,” Penelo announced.

Basch laughed – the first time Daina had heard him do so, and she immediately wished he would laugh again. It was a wonderful sound, warm and genuine.

“You are at that,” he said easily.

All too soon, the laughter died. The mismatched band of travelers exchanged grim looks. With the Empire at their backs and the Valley of the Dead beckoning them forward, Ashe and her entourage ascended the first ramp.

* * *

Daina took her usual place behind and to the left of Ashe. Basch fell into step beside her. She wanted to speak with him, but her worry over what Ashe would think of her consorting with her father’s supposed killer kept her quiet. Even happy-go-lucky Vaan had taken some time to come to terms with Basch’s presence, never mind his innocence. The coup d’état in Nalbina two years past had settled its consequences squarely on Ashe’s shoulders.

Instead of speaking, Daina sang to the rhythm of their march. Not only Nabradian hymns but songs from Dalmasca, too. She even knew an Archadian ditty – not a very appropriate one because she’d picked it up from a drunken soldier, but at least she got a muffled chuckle out of Balthier. Everyone walked at their own paces, Fran understandably on edge. Forest-dwelling viera didn’t belong in this jagd wasteland, and the relentless urutan-yensa let them know that humes were far from welcome also.

The urutan-yensa patrolled the platforms, their crustacean-like bodies hidden behind tattered cloaks and metal masks, their speech full of clicks and scrapes that sounded like grinding iron. No one knew whether their race needed to slumber, but their predilection for putting intruders under sleep spells suggested they didn’t.

The sandsea swirled beneath the catwalks. The forgotten iron of the platforms and bridges had gone red with disuse. In some places, it had entirely rusted through and collapsed. It was hard work fighting their way west, and far from linear. The catwalks were rounded, like a series of rings connected by the straight expanse of bridges. Often, Daina completed a curve around a storage tank and stumbled upon a party of urutan-yensa, or a pack of alraunes, the territorial, spike-headed cousins of deadly nightshade plants. Whenever the alraunes heard approaching invaders, they uprooted themselves and ran at the invader’s legs, lowering their red tomato heads like charging rhinos. Daina was constantly in danger of tripping over rivers of cables that snaked across her path and dangled, eaten through, off the edge. The fighting was dirty, confined to the narrow catwalks, the bulk of the work falling on those with swords. There simply wasn’t enough space for Fran or Balthier to have clear shots. After a few hours of this, Daina was covered in sand, rust, and sweat.

Near sunset, Basch called a halt at the top of a refinery tower, where silent machinery and fused gears sat indifferently in their sand-filled housings. Ashe lowered herself stiffly in the lee of a pipe. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, but she would never have said so. Daina was glad Ashe had this chance to rest. The last rays of the sun turned to molten gold, the wind warm and comfortable. She had always enjoyed sunset on the desert, after the brutal heat of day and before the chill of night.

Ever curious, Vaan peered over a railing, rust flaking beneath his palms. He stood there, poised at the edge of their narrow world, studying the giant hammer-like shape of iron against the sun.

“A construct to draw oil from the ground,” Basch told him. He ran a cloth along his sword’s blade and inspected both for sand. “Abandoned many years now, it seems.”

“I don’t remember when we needed to burn oil for light or coal to heat our homes,” Daina admitted. The invention of the glossair engine twenty years earlier had negated the necessity of fossil fuels; the glossair rings operated instead on the plentiful Mist of the land. Other advancements had soon followed, completely transforming the quality of life across Ivalice.

Vaan brushed his hands on his trousers. “Did Dalmascans build this?”

“No,” Basch said. “The Rozarrians. Their empire lies far to the west, ever at war with Archadia. Heedless of the kingdoms caught in their midst. Dalmasca. Nabradia.” His amber eyes unerringly found Daina. “Landis.”

She took that as an invitation and sat near Basch, the only Landisian she knew, and felt a little less sorry for herself. She cleaned her own blade with loving care. It had been two years since Nabudis’s destruction – there were Nabradians in Ivalice still, though their numbers were few. Of Landis, a country that had died twenty-two years past, there was nothing left.

A heavy tread on the platform, just beyond the curve, impelled her to her feet, kogarasumaru drawn. The plant-like alraunes made little bubbly popping sounds as they hopped around on their root-legs, and the urutan-yensa’s stilt-like feet tapped, metal against metal. Whatever was coming was neither. The newcomer spoke when he topped the ramp, continuing Basch’s thought.

“ ‘Tis the small craft’s fate: to watch the list of the galleons and pray for light winds.”

“Vossler!” Pleased, Basch strode forward to clasp his friend’s hand. “Why are you here?”

“Imagine my surprise, when upon my return to Bhujerba, I find both you and the Lady Ashe have vanished.” Vossler frowned in Balthier’s direction. “I thought you above consorting with sky pirates.”

Basch held his ground on that one, for which Daina was thankful, when he said, “Balthier is a man worthy of our trust. And it was the Lady Ashe’s decision. I am content to lend my arm. As I could not when Rasler died, when her throne was taken. Never again. I will defend her this time.”

“You walk the knight’s path,” Vossler said, laughing. “The Lady Ashe?”

Basch turned his head as if to point her out, but Daina intercepted Vossler. “She’s fine, and she’s resting. Please, we shouldn’t disturb her. How did you find us?”

“Balzac.” Vossler put a hand on his hip. “Your shopping trip in Rabanastre did not go unnoticed. It only took a little work to discover the flight path of the pirate’s airship.”

Daina had completely forgotten about Balzac. He had eyes everywhere. “We should keep moving, else others discover our intent with such apparent ease,” she said.

“Aye,” Basch said, and he went to speak with Ashe.

“Daina,” Vossler said, stopping her. “Thank you.”

“For what?”


	5. Interlude, part four

“I asked you to be my eyes, and you have done remarkably well.” He clapped a hand on her spaulder and grinned. “Tell me, what is your intent now?”

The question, asked in perfectly normal, reasonable tone of voice, gave Daina pause. Was it Vossler’s smile, perhaps, that didn’t reach his dark eyes? She did not believe now that Vossler trusted her, but she could not imagine why he would suspect her of consorting with the Empire. So she told him of Lady Ashe’s plan until the lady herself joined them and confirmed it.

“I see,” he murmured, one finger stroking his goatee. “So the Dawn Shard does lie in King Raithwall’s tomb.” His hand dropped. “The marquis sympathizes with your plight, yet the Empire watches his every move. He can keep whispers of your ‘abduction’ silent for only so long.”

“Yes,” Ashe said earnestly, “but tell me, Vossler, what have you accomplished? Have you found the means to restore Dalmasca?”

“First, we must claim the Dawn Shard,” he said evasively. “It all begins with that.”

They marched well into the night. Daina spoke to no one about her misgivings, for what good would it do? Vaan and Penelo – they wouldn’t understand. The sky pirates – Balthier had made it clear he was in this for the money, nothing more, and wherever he went, Fran followed. Lady Ashe walked alongside Vossler as she had always done, obviously relieved to have him back.

Basch . . .

Daina couldn’t say anything about Vossler. Not even to Basch. All she could do was wait, and watch, and protect Ashe should danger threaten.

* * *

Everything was sand and rust, sun and scorching wind. They slept through the hottest part of the day and resumed traveling when the sun began its slow descent.

Daina walked with her fingers running lightly over the rusted railing, her eyes trained on the expanse of heaving, yellow-blue sandsea. Strangely, the hues never mixed, were never green. The sea crested like waves, sending sprays of sand rather than sea foam. She thought it eerily beautiful despite the lingering smell of decaying metal and congealing oil.

“What’s down there?” Vaan, jogging ahead of her, suddenly asked.

“Looks like a cavern,” Daina said when she and Penelo joined him, staring down at the bank of real sand and the black orifice in the rocky cliff face. It had the look of a place that never saw sunlight, protected by the cliff’s overhang.

“Creepy,” Vaan muttered. Something green and red paced in the opening, but never ventured onto the hot sands. The dark colors gave off a faint, menacing aura after so many hours of brightness. Daina couldn’t tell what the thing was.

“Really creepy,” Penelo agreed with a shiver.

“Let’s keep moving,” Daina said. “Our route does not lie that way.”

They made it to the next section without incident, the uniformity of the endless series of oil rigs and bridges making everyone feel as if they hadn’t moved at all. Daina drifted to the edge again, her eyes straining to pick out something new, some kind of landmark, to prove that they weren’t caught in a hellish loop of jagd. Nothing.

Except a large shadow, moving faster than she could run, streaking over the sandsea.

She looked back with a shout of warning and then ducked as the wyvern screamed in over her head. The creature missed its mark when Vossler picked up Ashe and lunged out of the way. The wyvern careened into a storage tank. Its leathery wings whipped up a gritty windstorm as it clawed for the air again.

Fran let loose a hail of arrows, finding the soft spots in its belly, in the joints where wings met shoulders. Keening, the wyvern crashed onto the bridge where Daina was standing. It thrashed with taloned feet and wings, keeping all swords at bay. Balthier took aim and fired, opening up a bloody hole in the beast’s chest.

In agony, the wyvern flipped over, serpentine neck and tail slamming into the bridge. Daina, avoiding both, got trapped on the wrong side, separated from the haven of the platform and her friends by the wyvern’s bulk.

With a gut-wrenching groan, the bridge’s ancient supports snapped. More rust than iron, it couldn’t hold the wyvern’s agonized weight and began to sink. Daina whipped out the ashura, hacking and slicing at the beast’s limbs. When it recoiled with cries of pain, she climbed right over it, quick as a wyrdhare.

“Take my hand!” Basch yelled.

Daina scrambled past the dying wyvern’s head. Basch’s larger hand closed on her wrist. He yanked her closer, but it was as if they’d been caught in a graviga well. The sand and the rust beneath their boots gave him no traction. Instead of pulling Daina to safety, she ended up pulling him over the edge when the bridge disappeared beneath her feet.

The wyvern’s carcass and the bridge splashed into the sandsea, and the two humes plunged in after. Daina hit bottom a split second later and then launched herself skyward. The sea was shallow here!

It wasn’t like water. To Daina’s dismay, she found she wouldn’t float. Fortunately, having grown up in a land of lakes, she could hold her breath for a very long time. She swam in the direction of the waves, letting them push her closer to shore until she staggered out, coughing, encrusted in sand. Basch climbed out after her, shaking the sand out of his wheat-gold hair. It showered off him in a sparkling rain.

“Are you all right?” Ashe called. Daina could see her, a dark shape against the low sun, leaning dangerously far over the railing.

“Yes!” Daina shouted back. She didn’t see any ramps here, any way to reach the rusting platform and the princess. She did see another cave mouth, however, and her stomach sank like the bridge. “But I don’t think we can get back to you.”

“Vossler!” Basch inhaled sand and coughed. His rough voice went hoarse. “We’ll have to find another route. Go on without us.”

“All right, Basch.” Vossler saluted them. “Keep your wits about you!”

The two stranded knights spent the next several minutes scrubbing sand out of their hair and clothing until the noise of their friends’ passing faded. Then, Basch looked at Daina, and Daina crossed her arms over her middle and shrugged. More sand fell. She sighed. She’d never get it all off unless she stood naked under a waterfall.

“Now what?” she asked.

Like her, he scanned the bank. The cave mouth practically jumped out at them, beckoning. He nodded at it. “The Zertinan Caverns. It’s a vast network that honeycombs the Jagd Yensa. There are entrances all over the Nam-Yensa Sandsea, and into the Ogir-Yensa. Our best bet lies through there.”

“I’ve never been one to gamble,” she said. In other words, she really didn’t want to go in there. “We have no idea where this tunnel leads, or if it leads anywhere. I need to know all possible outcomes before I commit to a course of action. I would never have been able to keep Her Majesty safe without doing so.”

“It isn’t possible to know everything,” he said.

“So Vayne taught me.” She tightened her arms and scowled at the sandsea, aware that he was staring at her again.

“The Fates have us here for a reason,” he said, softer. “I prefer to do everything in my power to save myself, rather than wait for a rescue that will never come.”

She grimaced. “All right. Underground it is.”

Together, they cautiously approached the cave mouth. No trace so far of the green-and-red thing Vaan had seen. She descended the sandy slope with rising optimism. Though the daylight quickly died, a circle of sunlight pooled beneath a crevice in the cavern’s roof ahead of them, lighting the way.

“Thank you,” she said presently, eyes on the sunlight. “For trying to rescue me.”

A pause. “You’re welcome.”

Delicious shivers ran through her at the sound of his low, rough voice. Though she never looked at him, she was aware of him, especially when the first slime dropped from the ceiling and his sword flashed out, beating the glow-in-the-dark amorph back. Her kogarasumaru joined in, and they slew not one, but five slimes in a row. The slimes melted into puddles of toxic green that Daina avoided. The two knights traversed long, dark tunnels and yawning caverns, some of which were filled with shafts of dimming sunlight. Falls of sand from above, or pits of swirling sand draining downward, forced them to backtrack a few times, but Basch seemed to have a compass in his head and kept them moving west.

Although there was no food and no water, Daina could not help trusting that he would find a way for them to rejoin their friends.

* * *

However, she was the one who discovered the pool, which was guarded by horned speartongue toads. Green and red, they were. Green and mean. By then, Daina, tired, hungry, and filthy, was feeling meaner. Without preamble, she and Basch dispatched the immense, red-bellied toads and then stared down into the pool.

A real, freshwater pool, rippling in a bed of rock, fringed by spiky desert succulents. Their large, pink blooms perfumed the air. No sand.

“You may make use of it first,” Basch said. He sheathed his sword. Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked back up the slope until he rounded the corner and was gone.

Grateful for his courtesy, Daina unbuckled her sword belt, spaulders, and greaves. Then she removed the green coat, shaking it out over the plants. Her boots and gloves went next, and her shorts. Stripped to her smallclothes, she knelt at the edge of the pool and scooped water over her arms, her neck, face, belly, and legs. She longed to submerge, but with nothing to dry herself with and the pending night only moments away, she refrained. It was cool in the cavern, the water colder still.

With reluctance, she put her gritty uniform back on. Her hair was a hopeless mass of sand. She finger-combed the strands as best she could while she climbed the slope after Basch.

“Your turn,” she told him cheerfully, and then settled down to wait.

* * *

Since it was foolish to go blundering around the caverns in the dark, they built a fire of dead cactus wood and examined their various cuts and scrapes by its uncertain light.

“I don’t know how I got this one,” Daina said, laughing. She showed him her elbow. An ugly gash ran from the lower end of her triceps halfway down her forearm. “I didn’t even notice it. Now that I know it’s there it’s going to start hurting like the abyss.”

“Let me see it, please.” Basch handled her arm with gentle fingers, applying potion to it with a wad of cloth that had, somehow, survived without the coating of sand that had ruined everything else.

It stung, and she winced. “I was right. That hurts.”

“My apologies,” he said with a chuckle. He finished his work and released her. “Lucky we have potions on hand for this. That might have been a nasty scar.”

Her skin tingled where he’d touched her. She hugged her arm to her side. She couldn’t help glancing at the ugly scar carved across his brow. Potions and phoenix downs were only viable if used immediately. Someone dead more than a few minutes could not be revived by phoenix magick. A wound as deep as that one must have been, when left untended, inevitably scarred.

“Don’t put that away yet,” she said, reaching for the potion bottle. “You missed a spot.”

She’d seen it when he turned his head, his wheat-gold beard catching the firelight: a nick on his cheekbone, still weeping scarlet. As intent on her work as he had been, she wiped the blood away with her thumb and dabbed a little potion into it, watching as it healed to a thin pink line. She sat back. “There, all done.”

When she looked away from the cut, she found him staring at her. Electrified amber eyes, just an arm’s length away. And that scar. It drew her closer, her curiosity guiding her fingers. He let her trace the scar with her fingertips, across his forehead, through his eyebrow, and down to his ear. An inch south, and he’d have lost an eye. When her touch lingered along his jaw, his eyes slid partway shut. The golden beard was softer than she expected.

He put his hand over hers, holding it to his face.

Daina quit breathing. She hadn’t meant anything by her exploring. She had never tried to start anything with a man, content to let Balzac lead the way. Her indifference, she realized now, stemmed from the fact that she had never actually cared for Balzac, had never been attracted to him. Not like this, teetering on a ledge, hoping beyond hope that she would fall. Helpless, she leaned into Basch, the plane of his cheek warm beneath her palm. His other hand wove into her hair. Her entire body lit up like one of the dancing orange flames at her feet when he kissed her.

Oh, she thought. _Oh._

After that, she couldn’t think at all. Her eyes closed and she kissed him back, feeling the tugs in her hair and his lips hard on hers. A hand ran down her side, settling in the curve of her waist. Electricity zipped up and down her spine. It sapped her strength, and she melted against him.

Then, something unthinkable happened. The kiss stopped.

She could feel that, too, his drawing away. Collecting himself. Putting space between them, two feet wide but as impassable as a ravine.

He looked determinedly at the fire. When he spoke, his low voice was rough in a whole new way. “Forgive me.”

Dumbstruck, she stared at him, unable to fathom this sudden change of heart.

“I’m old enough to be your father,” he explained with a self-deprecating smile.

Daina frowned. Admittedly, she hadn’t considered things from that angle before. It was true. He was twice her age. What did that mean, honestly? His thirty-six years to her eighteen? He had already become an adult by the time she had been born; had lost his country; had fled to Dalmasca. He’d worked his way through the Order of Knights ranks to captain. He had likely loved someone before. Perhaps many someones. His knowledge and experience encompassed nearly two decades of time that Daina had yet to traverse.

But, she simultaneously decided and spoke, “Does it matter?”

He was not a father-figure to her. She was also an adult and had her own experiences and input that she need not be ashamed of, even though she was not yet twenty. Besides, he was obviously attracted to her, and she to him. Smiling, Daina met his eyes.

What she saw there staggered her worse than an amphora of bacchus’s wine.

It did matter to him. It mattered very much, so much that Daina could see he wasn’t going to allow himself to get that close to her again.

No, she thought, aghast. That wasn’t fair. How could Basch do this to her? He must know how she felt. There wasn’t any possible way to hide it, not after a kiss like that.

His face was hard and cold again, as unyielding as stone.

“I see.” Mortified, Daina drew back.

She loved him. She thought he had come to care for her, too.

Or had she misunderstood?

Her hands curled into fists. She hadn’t misunderstood. That fire inside him – she hadn’t misunderstood! So. Did she want to push the issue? Was it a battle she could win?

No, she thought again. She couldn’t make him love her. Only he could do that. If she, as a woman, wasn’t good enough, then . . .

There was no sense in prolonging this conversation. Keeping her voice light, Daina suggested they get some sleep. “We should find the others early tomorrow, so Vaan doesn’t get himself killed looking for us.”

“Agreed,” Basch murmured, relieved.

Daina got up and moved to the other side of the fire. Inside, her heart was breaking.

* * *

Rest did not come quickly to her, and when she did finally sleep, she dreamed. Busy dreams that ruthlessly tossed her out of unconsciousness like throwing out the trash. She awoke with a start, her cheek in the sand and her eyelashes full of the ash from their dying fire. Feeling a thousand years old, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Basch was still asleep, stretched out on his side, his head pillowed on his folded arm.

He was so beautiful.

It hurt to look at him. She couldn’t stay there. She meandered to the pool of still, clear water and sat at its edge. There, at last, she could cry. She hugged her knees to her chest, buried her face in them, and let the tears come.

* * *

If Basch had behaved differently after the night before, Daina might not have been such a wreck.

Since neither of them was in the habit of talking much, their silence wasn’t unusual. A little chitchat might have changed everything. When he did speak, he was still courteous and so terribly gentle Daina was in constant danger of bursting into tears. She couldn’t bear to walk beside him. She kept her head down, veiling her face with her hair. If she hung back, he led the way without complaint. If she quickened her stride, he drifted to the rear and allowed her to take point. As if he had no opinion of his own. As if he was just doing what needed to be done because there was no other choice. As if her presence was no different than that of the mindless sand, flowing along the same path. Not once did either of them mention what had happened by the fire. It was a mistake, one that couldn’t be forgotten soon enough.

She was such a child. A sulky, ignorant child.

And that was exactly the problem.

* * *

Whether the Fates had directed them or not, they exited the Zertinan Caverns in a secluded section of the Nam-Yensa Sandsea and nearly scared the hair off a traveling merchant named Dyce.

“Faram preserve me! Popped right out of no man's land, didn’t you?” he gasped, straightening his turban. He rescued his lunch from the sand and his chocobo’s questing beak, still blessing himself.

While Daina blinked to accustom her eyes to the direct sunlight, Basch spoke with Dyce and learned that Lady Ashe and the others had passed this way already, had met with the fearsome avion, the garuda, and had defeated it at the entrance to King Raithwall’s tomb.

“I’ll gladly go with you through the Valley of the Dead,” Dyce said, having set aside his ruined meal. “There’s Galtean treasure in those ruins, and I can’t say as I’d mind a pittance of it. No, usually I’d never go near, not me. Too dangerous! By the way, do you need anything?” With the last, he opened his saddlebags and displayed his wares.

Dyce’s chocobo could travel faster than the two knights, of course, but Dyce liked hearing his own voice so much that he dismounted and walked with them so he could comfortably continue talking. Daina was grateful for his cheerful presence. With shining eyes, the merchant showed them where the battle with the garuda had taken place. He then waved them into the opened tomb with a shouted, “Good luck to you! I’ll be here if you need me!”

The tomb was a frightening, ancient, dark, and musty place. A place that did not welcome visitors. They made their way slowly, their senses protesting this return to gloom after the blinding glare of the sun. Daina warily lowered herself to a narrow, suspended bridge, following Basch.

The tomb, so much less friendly than Dyce, greeted them with a flame-eyed demon wall. At an ominous clicking behind her, Daina whirled around.

The demon wall’s two red eyes lit up a face out of a nightmare, washing their surroundings in blood-colored light. Groaning and grinding, the stone came to life, brandishing giant scimitars. It dragged itself toward them with a row of enormous centipede legs. Its bulk completely blocked off the bridge. It meant to crush them against the far wall.

Frightening though it was, it was sluggish. Daina and Basch sprinted down the walkway ahead of the juggernaut, bursting into another antechamber and the remains of a second demon wall. Dust still hung in the air. The work of their friends, no doubt. She heard the living demon wall in the first room laboriously returning to its previous position to await the next trespass.

Basch surveyed the destroyed wall, and then sheathed his sword, his eyes tracing tracks on the dusty floor. “We’re close,” was all he said.

As usual, he was right. Daina heard their voices first.

“It wounds me to look on as they pillage so solemn a place,” Vossler muttered, his voice wrapped in echoing whispers that clung like cobwebs.

“Yet without help, you and I are nothing. Is this not so?” Ashe asked reasonably. “He thinks ever and always on his own profit. Assure him of it, and he shall remain true to our cause.”

They were talking about Balthier, doubtlessly. Daina rushed up the stairs. She reached the top just as Vossler said, “I do not share Your Majesty’s trust.”

“We will continue this later,” Ashe said with an impatient wave of her hand. She turned away from Vossler and saw Daina. The smile that suffused her lady’s face snagged Vossler’s attention. His scowl vanished as if wiped clean. He came forward to greet Basch with a grin, and then Vaan saw Daina, too.

“You made it!” he yelled gleefully.

Penelo shyly approached Daina and hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Was she okay? Daina didn’t respond. She felt like some piece of her had gone missing. Somewhere behind her, Basch inquired after the princess’s health.

Balthier, examining a wall sconce across the room, had not joined in the noisy welcoming. Fran, however, looked up, and her eyes met Daina’s for a long, discerning moment. Understanding softened the viera’s expression. Daina blushed. Was it truly so easy to see what had happened in her face? Would the others be as quick to divine the truth as Fran?

None of the others seemed to have noticed the silent exchange, however. Ashe took a few slow steps deeper into the tomb.

“Now we should concern ourselves with finding the Dawn Shard,” she said dreamily. “It sleeps, in waiting. Somewhere deep within.”

“How can you be sure?” Vossler asked.

Ashe took another step, her body canted as if she were a marionette guided by a puppeteer’s strings.

“I can hear its call,” she said.

* * *

Traveling with seven other people offered advantages that a single companion lacked. Daina chose to walk with Penelo and Fran, listening to the viera’s friendly lecture on Mist and magicks.

“Fog?” Penelo wondered, gazing around at the thick twinkling in the air that twined around their ankles and caressed their hair. “Underground?”

“Not fog,” Fran said. “Mist.”

Penelo’s eyes widened. “You can see the Mist? With your eyes?”

“Where it is thick enough, you may.” Fran lifted her head in that queer sniffing motion of hers. “The nether runs deep in this place.”

“So, is the Mist dangerous?”

“Yes, but it is also an aid. A dense Mist allows the working of powerful magicks.”

They kept walking. Daina did not see her surroundings, did not even notice whether they were on a staircase or not, of which there seemed to be hundreds. All she saw was the broad back of Basch’s quilted red vest, the phosphor of their lamps glimmering in his unruly curls. Fran put her long-nailed hand on Daina’s shoulder and then looked at Basch with an encouraging smile. Daina shook her head. It was impossible, and it was over. Basch did not want her. The best thing she could do now was endeavor to close off that part of her heart. Life would go on without her meanwhile.

Raithwall’s tomb hindered them at every possible step with ancient traps, puzzles, and undead beasties. Shambling zombie magi and squawking skull warriors harassed them in the underground maze. Daina’s ashura, being dark elemental, proved useless, but the kogarasumaru was more than a match for the undead. It also stood her in good stead against the tomb’s magickal guardians, the two-faced ragoh statues, which gnashed their huge square teeth that could chew up mythril and spat magick at anything that moved.

Some ragoh had mutated over the centuries, as well. Fran theorized that they had swallowed fire elementals for greater Mist manipulation. Eternal flames burned atop the mobile statues like lit tallow candles, showing that the elementals were still trapped within the melted metal of the original ragoh.

The roving bands of living statues seemed to act on the will of another. Daina discovered who – or rather, what – when she walked into a circular chamber filled with twinkling, fog-like Mist that housed a two-headed, four-armed, cloven-hoofed statue on a throne.

When the party approached it for a closer examination, the statue stood and challenged them.

* * *

“This is a far cry from a work of art,” Balthier exclaimed.

He was right. The creature, a gigas, changed color like a chameleon until the appearance of stone dropped away. It seemed to be fashioned of two torsos and two heads, a man-like one stacked on top of one that resembled a simian beast. It brandished a two-bladed ax, fire rippling down its gray skin and burning red mane, and then it attacked. Vossler, Vaan, and Basch rushed to engage the monster before it could endanger Lady Ashe. Daina, who yesterday would have surged in fearlessly with her sword, hesitated.

Unconcerned with the three swordsmen flocking around it, the gigas unleashed a firaja blast that blew everybody flat or into the walls.

The man part of the two-headed gigas slung great gouts of magicked oil that the beast part set aflame. Fran and Penelo reclaimed control of the battle, flinging water spells at the fiery creature. The three men kept it at bay with physical strikes so that the two women could cast their spells uninterrupted, making good use of the abundant Mist. Having had some sense knocked into her by the wall, Daina stayed by Ashe to block as much of the continued bursts of firaja as she could. It was a hot, slippery struggle in the bowels of Raithwall’s tomb, but Ashe had come too far to quit now. Ferocious as a beast herself, she struck the killing blow.

When the gigas Belias yielded its name and the fight, it bowed to the princess before it condensed into a Misty crystal, to sleep until summoned again.

Panting softly, Fran shook her ponytail over her shoulder. “ ‘In vainglory they arose, shouting challenges at the gods. But prevail they did not. Their doom it was to walk the Mist until Time’s end.’ A legend of the nu mou.”

Daina raised her eyebrows. She had never seen a nu mou, though she knew that most of the canine-like race resided on holy Mt. Bur-Omisace in service to the Light of Kiltia. The priests, or kiltias, did not concern themselves with the world below the mountain. Odd that they would have such a legend.

“My family tells a story of the Dynast-King and an esper,” Ashe said wonderingly. The Mist crystal glittered in her palm. “The story goes that in his youth, the Dynast-King defeated a mighty gigas for which the gods took heed of him. Thereafter, it was bound to him in thralldom.”

“So all this time it’s been here guarding the Dynast-King’s treasure,” Balthier said dismissively, more interested in mopping lingering oil off his sleeve with his handkerchief than in the conversation.

“Not so,” Ashe disagreed, her gray eyes wide. “The esper _is_ the Dynast-King’s treasure.”

“That’s your treasure?” he demanded incredulously.

“In this esper we now command rests a power whose worth is beyond any measure,” Ashe said fervently.

“Is that so?” Balthier looked angry, cheated, but he attempted to shrug off his disappointment. “Call me old-fashioned, but I was hoping for a treasure whose worth we could measure.”

Nobody had anything to say to that. Dissatisfied on all fronts, they moved on. They reached the final chamber unchallenged.

Within, clockwork gears spun ponderously, light glimmering off polished metal and marble. They could see the Dawn Shard, lying by itself on a simple pedestal.

“Is this the mechanism that controls the statues, do you think?” Daina asked Vossler. If so, it was huge. The full chamber clicked and whirred continuously, oblivious to their intrusion. It seemed sacrilegious to walk there, and most of them paused in the doorway.

Vossler didn’t answer her.

“What’s wrong?” Basch asked in an undertone.

He was staring at Vossler, who was staring at the stone, but Vossler ignored him, too.

“Your Majesty, we must go,” he said.

Ashe nodded and stepped forward. She mounted the stairs to the shard’s pedestal, and the stone began to glow with a pale blue light. Then, she froze. “What?”

From her vantage point, Daina couldn’t see anything that might trouble her lady. However, struck by Ashe’s slender form surrounded by Raithwall’s glory, she felt the strength of her vows rising up. Her purpose filled her, leaving no room for anything else. Ashe had sounded surprised and apprehensive. Daina must protect her.

Hand to the kogarasumaru’s hilt, she started forward.

Vossler grabbed her. Not gently, and with both hands.

“What are you doing?” Daina hissed. She squirmed, but could not break his grip. “You’re hurting me!”

“Vossler.” Basch’s stern face darkened. He advanced on them, every muscle taut.

“Rasler . . .” Ashe whispered.

They looked at her, all of them, but Daina still couldn’t see anything unusual. When Ashe made a sudden grab as if to catch someone’s arm, Vossler’s hands finally relaxed; the princess held the Dawn Shard.

Ashe looked at the stone. It was mostly round, faceted into shape, though one end was rough and elongated like the butt of a lemon. She turned it over, and then she lightly touched the two rings she wore on her left hand. One was her wedding band, exquisite and feminine. The second, larger one didn’t quite fit her middle finger.

“You will be avenged,” Ashe whispered to it.

Daina pushed away from Vossler, rubbing her arms sullenly. He did not apologize, wholly fixated on Ashe. Basch’s brief, unexplainable moment of protectiveness passed, and the ravine yawned between them again.

“Let us go,” Vossler said, hovering at Ashe’s shoulder.

Distracted, Lady Ashe allowed him to lead her out of the tomb via the reactivated way stone devices that teleported them back to the entrance. After the first one, Vaan nearly tripped over his own feet backing away from it.

“What was that thing?” he asked, staring at it. It looked like a shortened lamppost, glowing from within, spinning benignly a foot off the floor.

Balthier rolled his eyes. “A contraption you’d find in all but the most rudimentary ancient ruin. One touch, and off you’re whisked to you know not where. The finer points of their operation elude me, but they’re handy all the same. What more need a sky pirate know?”

Handy they certainly were, like all of Balthier’s toys. The way stones seemed to operate along the same lines as a Rabanastran moogling station, though without the friendly moogle attendant. Within three stones and a mere five minutes, they traversed what had taken several hours on the way in. The tomb relinquished them gracefully, with no further attacks. Vaan bolted into the daylight first, his exuberance undamped by anything that had happened inside the tomb.

Then he looked up. His mouth dropped open.

A fleet of Archadian ships rumbled by overhead, their glossair engines operating flawlessly, impossibly, in the jagd. Before anybody could fall back, several valefor-class craft descended to the sand. When their doors burst open, a score of Imperial marksmen surrounded the little warband. A pair of troops tackled and disarmed Vaan first. Following Ashe’s lead, they surrendered. This time, however, Daina managed to stay by her lady as the soldiers forced them into the valefors at gunpoint for transport. With Ashe at her side, she could handle anything.

Onboard the _Leviathan,_ Judge Ghis met them bareheaded, his droopy eyes and broad smile as disgusting as ever.

“Such a tremendous honor to again be graced with your presence, Majesty,” he crooned. “You left us with such great dispatch upon our last encounter that I must confess I had begun to worry that we may have given some cause for offense.”

“Such a heartfelt display of remorse,” Ashe said impatiently. “Now what is it you want?”

Ghis’s slimy smile disappeared. “I want you to give me the nethicite.”

“The nethicite?” Penelo squeaked. She hid her hands behind her back, curling them protectively around Larsa’s manufacted stone.

“That is a base imitation!” Ghis shouted at her. It was clear he was still angry about their last battle. He took a breath through his nose, composing himself. “We seek Raithwall’s legacy. The ancient relics of the Dynast-King: deifacted nethicite. Did you not tell them, Captain Azelas?”

Ashe gasped, and Daina, unable to keep silent any longer, wheeled on Vossler. “Tell us what?” she snapped.

“Majesty,” he said quietly, “he speaks of the Dawn Shard. That is the nethicite.”

“Are you mad, Vossler?” Basch demanded of his one-time friend furiously. Dark night to sunny day, Daina thought dizzily, in more ways than one.

Vossler’s eyes narrowed. “If we are to save Dalmasca, we must accept the truth. I will fight this profitless battle no more!”

“Captain Azelas has struck a wise bargain,” Ghis interjected lazily. “In return for the Dawn Shard the Empire will permit Lady Ashe to reclaim her throne, and the kingdom of Dalmasca will be restored. Think on it. An entire kingdom for a stone. You must admit, ‘tis more than a fair exchange.”

“And when all is said and done, your master will have another pet,” Balthier put in.

Ghis didn’t seem to like this.

“Lady Ashe, let us take him for the people of Dalmasca. Your Majesty wallows in indecision on the peril of their heads!” Ghis drew his broadsword with a ring of metal on metal and put the blade to Balthier’s neck. “And his shall be the first to fall.”

* * *

“Well, at least your sword is to the point,” Balthier scoffed. He and Ghis locked eyes. The handsome sky pirate lounged over the blade, his head high and his expression arrogant. He smirked. Dared Ghis to do it.

Ghis’s eyes narrowed. He would.

Ashe, her lovely face pinched in fury, ungraciously handed the shard to the judge magister.

Ghis took it, tilting it this way and that to watch its eldritch glow flutter like liquid, and then turned away from them. “To think the relics of the Dynast-King were deifacted nethicite. Dr. Cid will be beside himself.”

“What did you say?” Balthier asked quickly, but a soldier shoved a rifle in his chest, and he backed up, scowling.

“Captain Azelas, take them to _Shiva,”_ the judge said in his deceptively lazy voice. “They should have leave to return to Rabanastre soon.”

Vossler, his face a stranger’s, and with the help of Imperials, escorted the group off the Dreadnought _Leviathan_ and onto the light airship class cruiser, the _Shiva._ Shackled hand and foot, Daina shuffled after the others, disheartened, mentally berating herself for not seeing Vossler’s treachery sooner. The implications were staggering. The great Captain Azelas was a traitor. It was a recent transformation, of that she was sure. Far from mollifying her, the realization simply made her sick.

“When we return to Dalmasca,” he said to Ashe, behind her, “we can announce that you are alive and well. I will then continue our negotiations with the Empire. I believe Larsa is the key. He’ll listen to us. We should trust him.”

Ashe’s footsteps stopped. Venomously, she asked, “Who are you, Vossler, to talk of trust?”

Daina retraced her steps and went to her lady’s side. Fine tremors rippled down Ashe’s body. Daina recognized the signs of someone trying, with all of her might, not to cry. She touched Ashe’s arm to lead her away. At first, her lady resisted, but then she went quickly, without assistance, her back straight.

When Ashe was out of earshot, Vossler lowered his head and softly answered her: “A son of Dalmasca.”

His hands hung limply at his sides. His pain was real. Daina, cuffed like a criminal, turned her back on him. He hadn’t trusted her at all. He’d gone and done this terrible thing on his own, believing himself alone, believing himself right. Why had he not confided in her, talked about his ideas before acting on them?

Was it because he thought her too young to be of any use or help?

Daina ran to catch up with Ashe and the others. She encountered a bit of a traffic jam in the corridor. Vaan leaned uncertainly over Fran. The viera bent double, her reddish eyes wide and staring. She moaned and whimpered as if stuck by a thousand pins, as if she couldn’t breathe.

“Such heat,” she groaned. “The Mist – it’s burning!”

She put her hands to her head and sank to her knees. Daina and Penelo flocked to her side worriedly, but a wavering, visible aura engulfed the agonized viera, and they didn’t dare touch her.

By this time, they’d gotten everyone’s attention. A soldier advanced, barking, “You, stand!” He went to grab Fran’s ears, but a blast of magickal energy sent him reeling backward.

“Where is all this Mist coming from?” Daina asked anxiously. It twined in her eyes, teasing, foggy.

“Ghis – the fool is using the stone,” Ashe said, looking toward the _Leviathan._ “But why? I assumed he meant to bring it to Vayne.”

“Perhaps he plans to use it to usurp the throne,” Daina suggested.

The twinkling thickened, billowing through the ship. Fran, breath hissing through her teeth, clenched her fists. Her claw-like nails scraped along the metal flooring, the resultant squeal making everyone cringe.

Vossler charged up to them. “Hold her down!” he shouted.

Too late. Fran jerked upright as if she’d been electrocuted. She screamed, showing every sharp tooth. She wrenched her wrists apart, shattering her cuffs, and then leaped into the air. She lashed out with her sharp stiletto heels. She kicked one soldier in the chest, punching a hole through his armor. Then she jumped to the other, slashing at him with her claws.

“What’s wrong with her?” Penelo cried.

Balthier sauntered up to her, adjusting his sleeve with one hand, his lock picks dangling in the other. “I always knew Fran didn’t take well to being tied up. I just never knew how much,” he drawled. He turned to Ashe, cocking an eyebrow. “How about you?”

“I like Fran’s idea.” Ashe held out her wrists so he could release her. “Let’s get out of here.”

Fran, consumed by her inexplicable berserker high, automatically followed when Vaan broke for _Shiva’s_ cockpit. She seemed to recognize friend from foe, although she lacked the ability to speak, crouched and panting like a wild animal.

Vossler loomed in front of Vaan, blocking the way with his greatsword, and he bellowed, “No farther! Sky pirates! The future of Dalmasca will not be stolen!”

Basch pushed forward, mindful of Vaan. He drew his sword, the curved mythril blade of the Order.

“Why do this, Basch?” Vossler asked. “This struggle is futile. You must know where it leads!”

“I do know. All too well.”

They glared at each other over their blades.

The next few moments were some of the most distasteful in Daina’s life. Vaan, Penelo, and Balthier stuck with the berserk Fran, taking down Imperials as they appeared. Daina drew her kogarasumaru and attacked Vossler, who was her captain, Ashe’s protector, and Basch’s friend. The four of them struggled. Nobody held back.

Vossler employed lightning-quick attacks and long combos that they found impossible to interrupt. He smashed through Ashe’s defense and flung her away, weaponless. He struck Daina a crushing blow that lifted her off her feet and deposited her, winded, some distance from where she had started. He was simply too strong for the two women, his expression hard and detached.

Basch, however, sent the greatsword spinning across the floor. Vossler knelt in front of his friend, blood pooling around his legs. Ashe and Daina, supporting each other, looked sadly on.

At last, Fran recovered her senses. The Mist had severely weakened her, left her hovering on the edge of a faint. Helped along by Balthier, she and the orphans gave up on taking over _Shiva_ and instead ran toward a valefor in the launch bay.

“Ashe, Daina, let’s go,” Balthier called.

Ashe looked once more at her remaining knights.

“Go,” Daina urged.

Full of sorrow, Ashe obeyed.

“All I have done,” Vossler said weakly, “I’ve ever thought of Dalmasca first.”

“I know you do. I would ne’er gainsay your loyalty,” Basch told him gently.

“Look on what my haste has wrought.” Vossler chuckled tiredly, blood bubbling on his lips. “Did I act too quick? Or was your return too late? I can serve her no more. You must take up my charge.”

After a moment, Basch turned away. He ran, sweeping Daina along with him. They left Captain Vossler York Azelas slumped unconscious – or dead – behind.

* * *

The valefor launched just in time. Ghis did not seem to have stopped whatever he was doing with the deifacted nethicite, or perhaps he couldn’t. He had chosen to play with a power beyond his control, and he paid the price for it. A massive explosion onboard the _Leviathan_ ballooned out and engulfed the _Shiva._ Their small craft yawed as Balthier struggled to keep them ahead of the destruction.

“This might get a little dicey!” he grunted as a shockwave tossed them all starboard.

Fran, her head cradled in Penelo’s lap, lifted it weakly. “The Mist, it manifests now.”

“Is that what you call this?” Vaan exclaimed with ill-timed hilarity, nabbing Daina before she pitched headlong onto the floor.

Boiling clouds rolled toward the heart of the explosion, gathering like the ocean before a tidal wave. The erstwhile dreadnought morphed into a supernova. An aureole of flame-colored strands spun and roiled like serpents. No trace of any airships remained, except for their valefor, tossed about by the storm winds of Mist. The glossair rings whined but miraculously did not fail.

Penelo pointed. “What’s that?”

Daina squinted against the glare of magickal power. Something like a tiny nuclear spark in the center of the conflagration beckoned.

“I think it’s the Dawn Shard!” Ashe leaned over Balthier’s shoulder to get a better look at it, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Then what are we waiting for?” he asked. He skillfully steered their little craft through the plasmatic inferno.

Vaan braced himself against the bulkhead, one arm looped around Daina’s waist to keep her steady; across the aisle, Penelo tended to Fran; Ashe, her face fierce, hovered near the sky pirate, helping to navigate.

That left Basch, standing alone. Unhappy. Withdrawn.

Tucked against Vaan’s side, Daina watched Basch through the curtain of her hair, traced every well known, beloved line of his face with her eyes. His hair, softly curling. His mouth, the corners turned down. His thoughts, hidden. She wanted so badly to go to him, to make him see her, to bring him back from whatever sad place had currently claimed him.

“It’s falling!” Ashe cried, her body tensed as if she meant to leap out of the valefor after the stone.

The deck dipped violently beneath Daina’s feet. She grabbed Vaan’s vest for balance. He didn’t notice. He seemed too wrapped up in some daydream of flying his own ship, eyes locked straight ahead, a fierce grin on his lips.

A day later, they retrieved the Dawn Shard out of the Nabreus Deadlands, its smoky blue facets dull in Ashe’s hands. This event threw a sizable melancholy over both Ashe and Daina. The Deadlands were all that remained of the royal city of Nabudis and their lord prince. Daina sequestered herself aboard the valefor, refusing to lay her eyes on the waste.

The _Leviathan_ and the 8th Royal Fleet were gone, as were Judge Ghis and Vossler, consumed by the stone. Their destruction left Ashe’s little band free but aimless. They returned to Rabanastre to recuperate. In pairs, Daina smuggled them to the Resistance hideout in Lowtown.

And promptly got into an affray with Balzac.

He intercepted the entire group at the entrance, obscured by its quarantine flags. He leaped off his crate and threw his arms around Daina, burying his face in her hair. “You’re safe!”

Momentarily stunned by his unreserve, she couldn’t use the next few seconds to tell him to keep his hands to himself. He started firing questions at her, still holding her possessively. The only question she caught was, “The captain?”

Daina inadvertently glanced at Basch, who was also called Captain, and Balzac’s eyes narrowed. With supreme effort, she tried to gather her wits, but they felt like mousse, hard to hold together.

“Captain Azelas is lost,” she said. She extricated herself from his embrace – or tried to. Balzac’s hand clamped on her wrist.

“We’ve had no word here from anyone,” he said. “Rumors abound of the marquis’s sudden malady. He’s fled Bhujerba. And who are they that you bring here? A traitor and thieves, by the look of them.”

“I brought them,” Ashe said. She stepped forward in such a way that Balzac was forced to give ground. Her gray eyes were as hard as granite. “We will discuss our news inside unless there is some reason you want all of Lowtown to hear you.”

Balzac mumbled an apology but was smart enough not to point out that keeping people out of the hideout was his job. Ashe strode by him as if he didn’t exist. After Vaan and Penelo had passed through, Daina jerked her wrist free and followed them, hurrying to catch up to her lady.

So did Balzac, signaling his bangaa friend to keep his station. “Daina, wait,” he said, jogging to head her off.

Ashe glanced over her shoulder at them. Basch paused too, his expression as impassible as Daina had ever seen it. She felt it, though, all the awkwardness of being trapped between an ex-suitor and the man she’d kissed – so willingly! – two days ago, and she was immediately furious at Balzac for putting her in this situation. She turned to Basch, meeting his amber eyes boldly, refusing to show weakness.

“Please see to my lady’s needs,” she said. “I will be there shortly.”

“As you wish,” he answered gently.

“Thank you.” Daina kept her eyes on the floor as she waited for her friends to leave so she wouldn’t have to see their curious or, Faram forbid, amused looks. Then, she spun on her heel and stalked into the kitchens. It wasn’t the right time of day for anybody else to be in there so she could be sure of some privacy.

“Daina –” Balzac started.

She cut him off with a snarl. “Just what do you think you’re doing? You have no right to question me so.”

He gaped at her. Then he shouted, “Don’t I? You ran off to no one knows where with a known traitor, and now you tell me that our captain has fallen!”

“Captain Azelas betrayed us,” she snapped. “Every one of us, you, me, all of Dalmasca! Sold to the Empire in the name of peace. He gave his life for it. Captain Ronsenburg risked everything to bring Amalia and me safely through his heinous deceit. What think you of traitors now?”

“Methinks you’re overly friendly with Captain Ronsenburg,” he sneered.

“That is none of your concern. You don’t own me, and you don’t have my affection!”

Balzac flushed red. “So it is him!”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve left me for him.”

“Left you?” she yelled. “You and I haven’t been together in a twelvemonth. You’re living in a fantasy world, Balzac. I’ll thank you for leaving me alone!”

She was so angry she thought she might laugh and cry at the same time, and settled instead for running blindly out of the kitchens.

* * *

“You heard that?” Daina’s cheeks felt hot enough to temper steel.

“I think the whole north sprawl heard it,” Penelo said, her expression apologetic. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Daina collapsed backward on her cot, her arms crossed over her face. Why was it, when a person wanted to die, the earth never obligingly opened up to swallow her?

Night came late to the desert, but in Lowtown, day came not at all. Ashe had retired to her room, to think or to sleep, dismissing Daina’s services until the morrow. Daina had retreated to the adjacent room she now shared with both Penelo and Fran.

“It’s okay, you know,” Penelo said from her cot. “He didn’t say anything.”

Of course he hadn’t said anything. He wouldn’t. He was a knight. Daina sighed and sat up, restless fingers undoing her long braid.

“Balzac – was he a boyfriend of yours?” Penelo asked with some hesitation.

“Nothing so serious,” Daina admitted. “I liked him for a little while, but I never was very passionate about it. We were playing at it, you know? Trying something new. It wasn’t love. Not like –” There, she stopped, mortified.

“Your heart does not lead you wrong,” Fran assured her in her strange, thick accent.

“My heart should not lead me at all,” Daina countered _. And it is his heart of which I cannot be sure,_ she added silently.

The conversation ended there. Her friends undressed and lay down, leaving her alone in the silence and the dark. When she finally fell asleep, long after her companions’ breathing slowed, her pillow was wet.

* * *

“So it was the Dawn Shard that brought down the Imperial Fleet,” Basch said.

Such had been Fran’s explanation of her strange behavior aboard _Shiva._ The outpouring of so much Mist had driven her mad, and it had annihilated their enemies.

They had gathered in the meeting room, the seven of them, subdued and bleary-eyed. There were few chairs. Something must have happened that required the unapproved liquidation of the Resistance’s assets. The room held little other than a scuffed table and a few magicite lamps. A stack of crates covered in dusty tarpaulins took up one corner. Daina sat at Ashe’s left hand, Basch stood to her right. Penelo took the only other chair in possession of all four legs, while Fran perched on the edge of the table.

Balthier paused in his pacing, his eyebrows raised. “You know your stuff,” he said, impressed.

“Destructive power of such force – I’ve seen it once before.” Basch leveled a grief-laden look at Ashe and Daina. “You know of what I speak.”

“Nabudis.” Ashe played with her wedding rings. She touched the one on her middle finger lovingly.

Vaan took a seat behind Penelo on the crates, sneezing when the dust puffed up around him. Eyes watering, he tried to listen as Basch continued speaking.

“The capital of Old Nabradia – Lord Rasler’s fatherland. During the invasion, a division of Imperials entered the city. There was a mighty explosion. Friend and foe died alike. Something was there – one of the Dynast-King’s relics.”

“The Midlight Shard was in Nabradia,” Daina confirmed heavily. Only Fate had kept her and Lord Rasler out of the royal city that day.

“More nethicite,” Balthier observed. “Well, no wonder they invaded.”

“That ridiculous war,” Ashe said disgustedly. She reached for the Dawn Shard, which had gone black and dormant, “the trap at the treaty signing – all because Vayne wanted power. He must not be allowed to claim the nethicite. The Empire must never hold it.”

“Oh?” Balthier crossed his arms and cocked his head. “They already do. The Dusk Shard, and most likely the Midlight Shard, too. Besides, can’t they manufact nethicite now?”

Ashe stood up, her fire undimmed. “Very well, then the path set before us is clear. We’ll use the Dawn Shard to fight them! Dalmasca does not forget kindness, nor ill deed done. With sword in hand, she aids her allies. Sword in hand, she lays to rest her foes. This nethicite I hold must be my sword. I will avenge those who have died. And the Empire will know remorse.”

Vaan leaned forward, his eyebrows pinched. Then, in one of his odd flashes of insight, he asked the one thing everyone was thinking.

“You even know how to use it?”

“I . . .” Ashe looked at the stone in her hand, and once more touched her rings. The answer was no. None of them did.

No one spoke for a moment.

“The garif may know,” Fran said unexpectedly, and quietly. She turned away from them as if unsure she should be sharing her knowledge with humes. “The garif people live by the old ways. Magicite lore is a part of their culture. They may hear it. The cry of the nethicite’s power.” She turned back, her reddish eyes hard. “Whispers of the stone’s menace.”

“Dangerous though it be, what we need now is power,” Ashe said. She rounded the table, driven by her zeal. “Should we declare Dalmasca free without the means to defend our claim, the Empire would crush us. You must take me to meet with the garif.”

“They live beyond Ozmone Plain.” Fran looked at Balthier, who joined them.

“Not exactly close,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Fran.

Ashe scowled. “Compensation – is that what you want?”

“Straight to the point, aren’t we. I like that.” Smooth as steel, he smirked. “Compensation? How about the ring.”

Daina’s chair scraped the floor as she stood. Balthier! How dare he ask for such a thing, which belonged to her fallen lord and king?

For the first time, Ashe showed something like fear. “This?” she gasped, clutching her hand to her chest. “Isn’t there something else?”

“No one’s forcing you,” Balthier said coolly. He held out his ringed hand and waited.

Slowly, like a woman underwater, Ashe set the Dawn Shard on the table. She pinched Rasler’s engraved, silver wedding ring between her thumb and forefinger, hesitated, and then slipped it off. She dropped it in Balthier’s palm.

Still absently smiling, he looked at it, and then closed his fist and told her, “I’ll give it back to you. As soon as I find something more valuable.”

Ashe marched away without responding, leaving him standing there with his spoils. Penelo, Basch, and Daina started to follow her out of the meeting room.

“What do you mean, something more valuable?” Vaan wanted to know. He frowned at Balthier.

“Hard to say,” the pirate glibly answered. He fell into step behind Daina and Basch. “I’ll know when I find it.”

* * *

In the Muthru Bazaar, while they shopped for upgraded weapons, armor, spell scrolls, and supplies, Ashe asked about Vaan. “Who is he, really?”

Daina and Basch looked at each other. Four days had passed since the sinking of the _Leviathan,_ and some of the pain from the Zertinan Caverns had faded. They could speak to each other now with a semblance of normalcy. The only knights left to Her Majesty, they stayed with her always. Basch, however, kept the princess between them.

“His elder brother enlisted in the war, right at the end,” Daina said. “It was Reks who brought news of the betrayal at Nalbina back to Rabanastre, at the cost of his health and life.”

“I see,” Ashe said, crossing her arms over her middle. It did not surprise Daina that the princess had not known the name of the messenger, but she could see that this fact bothered Ashe very much. Ashe listened calmly while Basch related the actual events in his own words. When he finished, choked with emotion, she looked at him with new respect. And, perhaps, trust.


	6. Interlude, part five

“The garif are said to dwell in Kerwon,” Basch said, referring to the southernmost continent of Ivalice. “It is the rains now in Giza. The wadis will be swollen with the deluge. Passage may be difficult.”

“Regardless, we must go south, yes?” Ashe asked him.

“First things first,” Balthier said. “You’re eager to be on your way, I know, but we should see that we’re prepared before setting out.”

Ashe’s shoulders stiffened. “I made my resolve two years ago. I swore to overcome any hardship I may face.”

“Man cannot live by resolve alone, Princess.”

Ashe looked at him out of eyes like storm clouds. Then she looked at Basch, and she nodded her consent.

They were the unlikeliest of allies, but that was how the disthroned princess and her loyal knights came to travel with a hume sky pirate, his viera partner, and two Dalmascan orphans, to Jahara, Land of the Garif.

* * *

More than once in the days that followed, Daina noticed how Balthier’s practiced, facetious gallantry softened to something more sincere when he spoke to Ashe or did something for her. Ashe, of course, saw none of it. She never had much to say to him, so preoccupied was she with her task, and so Daina said nothing about it. If Ashe’s coldness bothered Balthier, he gave no sign of it. Something else lurked behind his knowing smirk, something that went deeper than his pirate trappings. He carried his good breeding around like a charm while his eyes ever sought the freedom of the skies and his flippant words assured them of his mercenary heart. Basch didn’t seem to like Balthier’s attentions to the princess, but he chose not to interfere until Her Highness requested it.

In the evenings, when the rains on Giza Plains slackened, and later, when the sun on Ozmone Plain sank behind the derelict bulks of airships downed ages past in some historical but forgotten battle, they made camp. During this community time, before they ate their final meal of the day, Daina sang for her companions the way she used to sing for her mother. The appreciation of her audience eased her heartache. In spite of the distance between them and her certainty that he did not care for her, she wanted Basch to notice her, to see his smile. He did, sometimes, when a particular song made him raise his head from his employment, but he never laid his aloof courteousness aside long enough to give her any real hope.

Ashe’s hope of assistance from the sturdy, masked garif died, also; they could not help her learn to wield the power of the Dawn Shard. Great-chief Uball-Ka examined the Dawn Shard in front of his fire, which blazed even in the oppressive heat of midday.

“This nethicite,” he mused in the staccato accent of his people. It was as though their tongues could not form all the sounds that a hume’s could and stressed the alveolar to make up for it. “You have _yuzzed_ it.”

“It was not I who used it,” Ashe said defensively. “Indeed, I had hoped you could show me how. Thus, I’ve come.”

A thick white beard flowed from below Uball-Ka’s mask, braided and beaded. Though the garif were built like large humes below the shoulder, coarse red fur covered their bodies. Each received a white-painted mask at birth that sharpened into hawk-like beaks. As if weighed down by the considerable weight of the horns of their masks, which described exaggerated S-shapes behind their heads, their necks stretched forward like those of animals. Supple white scales protected their throats, chests, and bellies, much like the legs of birds. With a heavy sigh, Uball-Ka lowered the shard.

“You do not know the workings of the stone. Then we are no different.”

Ashe’s hands, clasped in entreaty, dropped. “What?”

The great-chief waved his hand, his three thick, tapering fingers furless and black, over the flames of his fire. Ghosts of the past rose out of them as he spoke, like images of starlight painted on the smoke. “In ages past, the gods made a gift of nethicite to my people. But its manner of yuze eluded us. Displeased by our failure, the gods took back their stones. They chose instead to give them to a yume king. Called the Dynast-King, he yuzzed the nethicite’s power to bring peace to a troubled time.”

The beaked mask turned to Ashe, its dark eyeholes appraising her. The ghostly garif images, and that of dignified Raithwall, a golden crown on his head and a golden beard frothing upon his breast, vanished in the smoke.

“It is a curious thing,” Uball-Ka added. “Though the blood of King Raithwall flows through your veins, you cannot wield nethicite.”

“Cannot wield it?” Ashe repeated faintly. “So then, am I to understand you can’t tell me how to use the stone?”

Uball-Ka shook his heavy head. “Though it shames me so to admit,” he muttered. “Here before me stands a descendent of the Dynast-King himself . . . and I can accord her no help at all. Still, even if you knew how to yuze the nethicite, you would find it of small avail.”

He handed the stone back to its owner.

“The Mist collected in the stone over ages past is lost, and with it the stone’s power,” he said, settling back on his haunches. “It will be your posterity who wield the stone in ages yet to come. This stone is devoid of power. Empty, yet full of thirst. A terrible longing to drink the world dry.”

Ashe, whose face fell at the news that she would not be able to use the Dawn Shard, did not seem to hear his dark warning.

To everyone’s surprise, Ashe was not the only “yume-child” to seek the nethicite’s answers, as Lord Larsa proved when he joined them that evening on the great-chief’s hill. He requested Ashe’s attendance, and at a look from her lady, Daina joined them. Larsa had a proposition.

“To Bur-Omisace?” Ashe repeated.

Larsa grinned. “I say we ought leave tomorrow. I was going to wait for my escort, but meeting you presents a great opportunity. This terrible war can be stopped, but I will need your help to do so.”

“A war?” Daina asked.

“You know the Marquis Ondore leads a group of Insurgents –” Larsa caught himself with a slight shake of his head, “– your pardon, he leads a large Resistance force against the Empire. Lady Ashe, neither of our countries can afford this now. The Rozarrian Empire would stir. They would aid the Resistance and use this aid as a pretext to declare war on Archadia, and Archadia would have no choice but to answer.” Larsa reached for her hands, his small face earnest as he looked up into her eyes. “Let us go to Bur-Omisace. With the blessing of His Grace, the Gran Kiltias Anastasis, you may rightly wear your crown, and declare the restoration of the Kingdom of Dalmasca. As queen, you can call for peace between the Empire and Dalmasca, and stop Marquis Ondore.”

“For peace?” Ashe took her hands away. “How dare you say that! The Empire attacked us, stole all we hold dear, and you would have me save them from war?”

“Dalmasca would be the battlefield!” Larsa cried. His thin eyebrows pinched together. “What if nethicite were used on Rabanastre? You know my brother would do this!”

Ashe made no reply, though her expression belied her inner turmoil. Larsa, disappointed, drew back. “Forgive me, I presumed overmuch. I could think of no other way to avoid bloodshed.”

He lowered his head and spoke to the ground. “If you cannot trust me, then please, take me as your hostage.”

Later, Daina woke to find Ashe gone. Searching for her, she moved through the sleeping village on coeurl’s feet. Vaan, idly kicking stones, walked up the banks of the river Sogoht, heading more or less for the tents in their little encampment. Daina saw her lady behind him, standing by herself on the whimsically-painted wooden bridge that spanned the river. Daina joined her.

Ashe moved to the edge, watching the starlight turn the water to broken glass. She put her elbows on the railing, laced her fingers, and hid her mouth behind her hands. “If ever I were in need of your counsel, now is the time,” she said. “Vaan spoke to me of his brother, and what he is searching for. I do not share his trust that he will find it with me.”

“Why not? You are outcast among your people. As far as Vaan is concerned, you are not so different than he,” Daina said, more clear-sighted in Ashe’s case than her own. She leaned against the railing. “The only difference is that, in you, they see hope for their future. Although you cannot help them as you are now, you can witness their hardship firsthand. As queen, you will be able to ease your people’s troubles and make informed decisions for them based on these experiences. What other queen has been able to claim that? Treasure your time with him. He has lost much, but still, he moves ever forward. As should you.”

“Rasler,” Ashe whispered, closing her eyes against his memory. “Daina. What should I do?”

“Go to Mt. Bur-Omisace with Lord Larsa,” she said. “There, your questions may be answered.”

Ashe sighed. “Very well. However, my heart is not set.”

“It does not need to be,” Daina said. “Perhaps the correct answer will have better chance to show itself to you if you aren’t closing your heart to doubt.”

The next morning, Larsa beamed when Ashe told him of her decision. “I had other reason to invite you,” he said archly. “There is someone I’d like you to meet waiting on Bur-Omisace.”

“Who is that?”

“An enemy, and an ally also,” Larsa said. He shrugged and walked away, as precocious as ever. “You will just have to wait and see for yourself.”

Daina realized that Basch was not with them. She excused herself and headed back into Jahara in quest of him. She found him speaking with Balthier. Fran, never far from her partner, put her hand on her hip and shifted her weight to her other foot.

“War-chief Supinelu has arranged for chocobos for Their Majesties,” Daina said. “We’re ready to go.”

“Holy Mt. Bur-Omisace stands at the northern edge of the Jagd Ramooda,” Basch said.

“Once we’re in jagd, we need not fear pursuit by their airships,” Daina said, but Balthier shook his head at her.

“Don’t get your hopes up. You remember the _Leviathan_ sailed straight over the Jagd Yensa, right up to Raithwall’s tomb.” He gave a little shrug. “Skystone that works even in jagd. You know nethicite’s behind it. Little wonder they’re so keen on the stuff.”

Basch gravely asked, “And what is it you’re after, Balthier? You’re a welcome hand, and a great aid, but why?”

“Worried I’m out to steal the nethicite, eh? Can’t say I’m unaccustomed to people doubting my intentions,” Balthier said teasingly, but then he sighed, aggrieved. “Nothing could be further from my mind. Shall I swear by your sword or some such?”

“Apologies,” Basch said after a moment, “but I needed to know where you stand. Her Majesty depends on you. And you seemed to have an interest in the stone.”

“I’m only here to see how the story unfolds,” Balthier said glibly.

* * *

Lady Ashe was an accomplished avienne, for she had been riding chocobos since childhood. Daina swung up on her own prancing bird and adjusted her swords on the saddle. Little Larsa perched behind Basch, as Penelo was doing behind Vaan. Gurdy, the pink-cheeked moogle zooming around their heads on whirring bat’s wings, chirruped at her yellow-feathered flock while Balthier and Fran chose mounts.

“We can reach Paramina Rift through Golmore Jungle,” Basch said.

“Follow the chocobo trails east and north, kupo, to find the entrance to Golmore,” Gurdy instructed. She pointed with a tiny paw. The frilled white sleeves of her red dress fell well past it, and her red pompon bobbed as she gently rose and fell with the motion of her wings. Her sweet, furred face, liquid brown eyes with no whites, and small black nose reminded Daina of a child’s stuffed toy.

“Hyah!” Ashe cried. Their chocobos surged forward on powerful, orange-scaled legs, their narrow heads thrust forward like racing stock.

Nothing ran faster than a chocobo. Two future leaders of Ivalice rode with them; their safety was of utmost concern for Basch and Daina. Ozmone Plain teemed with ancient battle beasts gone feral: Hungry hume-wolf hybrids called zaghnals, their intellect long gone. Thirty-foot vipers lying in wait in the tall grass. Mesmenir warhorses, their shaggy purple coats matted beneath barding that their riders had not lived to remove.

Daina felt sorry for the mesmenirs. They had come from a time before humes realized that chocobos made faster and more reliable mounts than anything four-legged.

Vaan found the hidden trails used by the chocobos. He led the way past wild birds feathered in black or red, who fluttered their large wings and made their odd _kweh_ noises but otherwise let their bridled cousins pass.

At Golmore’s entrance, a sunny clearing that narrowed into a vine-covered tunnel of trees, they dismounted to prepare their steeds for the trek through the jungle. The birds balked at the enclosed space, and a chocobo’s speed would do no good on the narrow pathways, anyway. They had to be blindfolded and led forward on foot.

“I guess this one was a success,” Vaan said.

Penelo slid off Vaan’s chocobo, landing neatly. “Wow, I’m impressed, Vaan!”

“I got a good feeling!” he said.

He hopped down less gracefully than she had, and she pushed him over. After Basch had assisted Larsa down, the boy wandered over to the two good-naturedly fussing teens.

Patting her chocobo’s neck soothingly, Ashe slipped a leather blindfold over its eyes.

“An alliance between Dalmasca and the Empire?” Basch asked her, leading his chocobo over. She helped him put the blindfold in place.

“Reason tells me ‘tis the only course,” she said, with a faint smile at Daina. “We must avoid war with the Empire at all cost. Yet I fear I could not bear the shame. Had I but the strength –”

She stopped, fist clenched.

“A shame perhaps for me and for you,” Basch said, “but for Dalmasca it is hope!”

“And you can just accept this, can you?” Ashe asked wryly.

Basch stroked the downy feathers under his chocobo’s beak, and the bird nibbled affectionately at his hair. “After Vayne’s ruse I had abandoned hope for honor, yet never did I forget my knightly vows. If I could protect but one person from war’s horror, then I would bear any shame. I would bear it proudly. I could not defend my home. What is shame to me?”

Daina settled the blindfold over her own chocobo’s eyes, keeping her back to them. Her heart beat against her lungs painfully. She’d tried so hard to keep a respectable distance between Basch and her feelings, but when he said things like that she felt with all of her being how much she did love him. He was everything she had been taught to esteem. It wasn’t fair.

“My people hate the Empire,” Ashe murmured. “They will not accept this.”

“There is hope,” Basch quietly disagreed. “Hope for a future where we can join hands as brothers.”

Both Daina and Ashe followed his gaze to Vaan, Penelo, and Larsa, laughing at and teasing each other, the young prince smiling precociously up at the two older Dalmascans.

A faint smile softened Ashe’s stern, worried face.

“Let’s go,” Balthier called, impatient as always at having to stand still.

Golmore did not appreciate travelers. The blindfolded chocobos entered the darkness with their rocking, uneven gaits, trusting wholly to their riders to steer them over the disintegrating, swaying, fern-covered stone paths, suspension wires and cables furry with moss. Insects clicked and buzzed, getting in their eyes, their ears, their noses. The musty smell of the trees caused a few ruffled feathers, but that was all – until they rode down an incline into a pack of fiery hellhounds and had to retrace their steps at an awkward trot, driving off the hounds with arrows and shot.

To their dismay, magickal blue barriers blocked the way further into the jungle like glowing gates, shut firmly against the intruders. At the third dead end, Vaan lost his temper. He pounded the barrier with his fist, which repelled him like the taut skin of a drum. It rippled, resembling a vertical wall of water, and then steadied. He backed off, shaking his hand to relieve the sting.

“What is it?” he demanded.

Fran, who stared at the barrier with something close to disbelieving outrage, said, “The jungle denies us our passage.”

“What have we done?” Ashe asked in dismay, aware, like them all, that viera rarely showed such clear emotions.

“We?” Fran mocked. She turned on her sharp heel and strode off in a different direction. “No. I.”

“What’s that mean?” Vaan called after her. He gestured at the barrier. “How’re we supposed to get through that?”

Balthier fell smoothly into step next to the angry viera. “Making an appearance?” he asked at his most cryptic.

“I am,” Fran said curtly.

They strode by Daina, who had been keeping the rear.

“Come on! I’m talking over here!” Vaan shouted.

Balthier lowered his voice. “I thought you’d left for good.”

“Hey!” Vaan yelled.

“Our choices are few,” Fran said.

“Fran? Balthier?”

Fran added, “This is as much for you as it is me.”

“Oh?” Frowning, Balthier stopped.

“You are ill at ease. The nethicite troubles you?” she asked. She threw a coy look over her shoulder that turned into a smile as soft as a mother’s caress. “You’ve let your eyes betray your heart.”

“Ri-i-ight,” Balthier muttered, making the word into three syllables. He looked away, scowling.

Daina smiled, not surprised that Fran had noticed as well. Possibly the only ones who hadn’t were Vaan, and Ashe herself.

Fran approached a solid wall of vines. Gathering the Mist, Fran used her finger to draw glowing blue-green sigils that hung in the air. Bits of her spell broke off like falling leaves, but her strokes did not hesitate. She made a kissing motion that blew the glowing Mist off her claw-like nails at the wall.

“What are you doing?” Vaan huffed, leading the others closer. The chocobos came too, rustling their wings.

Fran looked down at him. Her voice, when she spoke, was dull. “Soon you will learn.”

Daina smelled something sweet, elusively familiar, floral but not. The wall abruptly came to life. The vines drew aside, vanishing like a reflection in a pond. Beyond, a new path appeared, unrolling from the tips of Fran’s toes. Moss, glowing golden. Ferns, uncurling like feelers. Flowers, straightening up and nodding. The path twined upward and away. Slowly, the glow faded, as did the elusive scent.

“Whoa . . .” Vaan breathed.

“We go to seek aid of the viera who dwell ahead,” Fran explained.

“I bet they’ll be glad to see you after so long,” Penelo offered.

Fran’s lips parted, but no words came. Her reddish eyes lowered, veiled by black lashes. Her headdress, which curved over her cheekbones like two fierce tusks, did not hide her sudden, childlike confusion.

“I am unwelcome. An unsought guest in their Wood,” she said in a small voice.

“Maybe we shouldn’t disturb them, then,” Daina said uneasily. Fran – tall, beautiful, indomitable Fran – looked as if she might cry.

But viera didn’t cry. Fran shook her head, composing her expression. “No,” she said, stronger. “This is the only way.”

Feeling apprehensive, they secured their chocobos and then followed Fran along the path until the moss changed to wooden planks. The green murkiness of Golmore yielded to light, clean air, and empty space. The trees, no longer choked by undergrowth or a canopy, grew straight and tall, and around these the viera had built their aerial village. The viera were known for their extraordinary craftsmanship, grace, and intellect. These qualities showed in the elegant lines of their arboreal masterpiece, all sleek golden wood, filigreed wrought iron, and serenity. The strong, flowery scent swirled through Daina’s head.

Fran paused on the border of the murky jungle and clear sunlight.

“In the village ahead you will find her: Mjrn.” She said the name as though she were swallowing it: _meeYURN_. “Bring her to me. She will know why you call her.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Daina asked.

Fran declined, explaining that she would wait lest her presence caused the wrath of those who dwelled in peace. Squaring his shoulders, Vaan led the way into uncharted territory.

* * *

The viera did not take kindly to intruders.

Everywhere Daina turned, reddish or brown eyes glared at her in total, crushing silence. Tall, nubile women stopped their quiet employment to stare, lips firmly closed. Dark skin glowed with inner light, adorned rather than covered by gorgeous filigree armor of black, silver, or cobalt blue, accented with scraps of lace and gauze. The wood-warders stood above their heads on special platforms, bows in hand, arrows nocked.

Whenever Vaan was brave enough to ask one of the viera about Mjrn, he met with the same furious statements: What business could a hume have with one of the viera? It must be a mistake.

“Are there only women?” Daina wondered under her breath. “Are there no men?”

“I have heard that viera men live far more cloistered than this,” Ashe whispered back, “hidden so deep in Ivalice that no one has ever seen them.”

“Better for us that this was not so,” Basch muttered. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and undeniably male. The viera’s wariness tripled at the sight of him.

“For a man to be so unwelcome as to seem hated, it must be difficult for you,” Daina teased. Basch frowned at her. Embarrassed, she remembered that she was trying to ignore him. Awkwardly, she tested a gate to a new path, but it was locked.

Nowhere did they find the viera named Mjrn.

Deeper into the village, the viera gathered. Beautiful, graceful, and suddenly dangerous, they closed ranks, denying further passage. Vaan came to a halt. A breeze danced through the generous space between them and him.

“Hey, Mjrn lives here, doesn’t she?” he called across it. “We’re here to see her.”

Although Vaan waited, the viera merely stared him down, their faces eerily lifeless. Then a single viera stepped forward, dressed in what looked to Daina like a pink negligee, her legs bare, her leporine feet encased in stiletto heels. Like Fran, she wore a garment that clasped at her throat, covering her shoulders and arms in black. Lace foamed around her hands. Soft silver hair framed her flawless but unsmiling face. Her long, furred ears were so white they looked like mist.

“You will leave at once,” the viera commanded. “It is not allowed for humes to walk on these grounds.”

Vaan had apparently had enough of their unhelpful hostility. “We’ll go,” he said, his male tenor far more menacing than the viera’s feminine tones had been, “as soon as we’ve seen Mjrn.”

“If you can find her,” the viera purred.

“We’re not leaving until you let us see her.”

The viera scowled. She crossed her arms under her small, high breasts.

Vaan scowled right back. “Fine then. We’ll look for her ourselves.”

He turned and began to walk up an adjacent path, but the viera behind him let out a low, “Ah!” and he stopped.

Fran emerged, sway-hipped and unapologetic though the gathered, silver-eared viera. Only her ears were marked with sable spots at the tips, and only she was dressed all in black. Only she seemed real, less ephemeral than the village viera. She shook her head down at Vaan.

“I’ve heard the voice of the Wood,” she said to him. “She says Mjrn is not in the village. Jote.” _HYOtay._ She raised her reddish eyes to the sneering viera woman. “Where has she gone?”

“Why do you ask?” Jote queried. “The Wood tells us where she has gone. Or . . .”

She paused, running a speculative eye over Fran. “Can you not hear Her?” She touched the side of a long finger to her lower lip, considering Fran’s dismayed expression. Her eyes widened. Revulsion wrinkled her nose. “You cannot. Your ears are dull from hearing _their_ harsh speech, I think. Viera who have abandoned the Wood are viera no longer. Mjrn, too, has left Her embrace.”

“And you forsake them in turn?” Balthier challenged.

“It is the will of the village,” Jote said coldly. “Viera must live always with the Wood. So is the Green Word, and so is our law.”

“We’ll let you worry about keeping your laws,” Vaan told her aggressively. “Just do us a favor and stay out of our way. We’ll find her ourselves.”

Jote eyed him, weighing his resolve, obviously wishing there was a way to get rid of him. Then she did a strange thing.

She closed her eyes.

Vaan stared at her, probably wondering if she was about to attack him. Slowly, she raised her overlong arms to the sides, and her head tipped back. She breathed in through her small, slit-like nostrils, deeply, her chest rising. From her feet, a magickal, elemental force rose around her, swirling upward with leaf afterimages caught in the glow. She breathed in again, and then let it out in a long sigh. Her arms relaxed. Her eyes opened.

“Our sister has left the Wood and gone west,” she said quietly. “She wanders warrens among men who hide themselves in clothes of cold iron. Thus to me has the Wood spoken.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk away, her people following close behind. Her misty hair was clasped in a loose ponytail at the base of her neck with a gold barrette.

“The viera may begin as part of the Wood, but it is not the only end that we may choose,” Fran said.

“The same words I heard fifty years ago,” Jote said dismissively without turning around. She vanished into her sanctuary along with all the others. Within moments, the little party was alone in the lofty village.

Balthier let out a sigh of his own and then hitched his crooked grin into place. “Not bad, Vaan,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d get any information out of that one. So then, what was she saying about men in a warren?”

“The Henne Magicite Mines,” Larsa suggested. “Maybe that’s what she meant. They lie in Bancour down at the Ozmone Plain. The entire region is a colony of the Archadian Empire. There would be soldiers.”

“Is that a problem?” Balthier asked, and then shrugged when no one answered. “Let’s move.”

He and Fran led the way to the village entrance, eager to return to Golmore Jungle’s humid embrace. The others followed, probably, like Daina, unnerved by all they had just seen and heard. She watched Fran, her silver ponytail swinging over her backside, for any faltering in her step, any bowing of her shoulders, but there was none.

“Fran!” Vaan called.

Fran turned. Her beautiful, ageless face was still cobwebbed with an old sorrow. “Yes?”

“I was wondering,” he began, strangely hesitant. “I was wondering – what Jote said, you know? About how you said the same thing fifty years ago?” He twisted his fingers together, obviously stalling.

“Your point?” Fran asked, no longer cobwebby, raising a silver brow on the last word.

Vaan didn’t hear the warning in her voice. “How old were you again?”

Dead silence gripped Eruyt Village.

Without a word, Fran marched away.

“Nice, Vaan,” Balthier groaned. He hurried after his partner.

“Surprisingly rude,” Larsa said.

Basch said nothing, pretending he hadn’t heard. So did Daina, who of course had wondered the same thing but knew better than to ask. The rumors were apparently true that a viera’s lifespan outstripped that of a hume many times over. Ashe made a sound of disgust deep in her throat, and Penelo tossed, “Try to grow up, please,” at Vaan as they left him behind.

* * *

The Henne Mines could only be reached by chocobo. Daina guided hers through shoulder-high weeds and gysahl greens, a chocobo’s preferred feed. She held her breath. The gysahl greens stank worse than week-old garbage; she was willing to bet that they were the reason chocobos themselves gave off such a strong odor. The smell was so noxious that it made some people physically ill.

At the entrance to the mines, Basch pulled his chocobo up short. The giant bird danced, cocking its head nervously. Larsa peered over the side at the pile of dead bodies littering the path. They lay in a way that suggested they had died fleeing something from within the mine. Some were soldiers, clothed in “cold iron.” The others, however, wore simple suits and skirts under white lab coats.

“Researchers from the Draklor Laboratory,” Larsa said in surprise. “What were they doing here?”

“Research,” Balthier answered, already tethering his mount to a tree.

Although Larsa frowned at him, he let it slide.

The mine here was somewhat narrower than the one in Bhujerba. Instead of railway tracks, a single curved groove led the way deeper, a track for hovering carts. Tiles were missing from the walls and the floor, revealing the dark earth beneath and threatening to trip them every other step. To Daina’s surprise, redmaw bats infested the first shaft. To see them so close to the surface was unusual, and spoke of trouble deeper in the mine. When she expressed concern over them, Basch indicated a damp piece of paper tacked to the wall near a closed gate.

_“Advisory warning,”_ it read.

_“Gate Operation. For immediate distribution and posting. The colour of the switchboard phosphor corresponds with gates currently closed. Accordingly, use of the switchboard opens gates of the colour presently illuminated. Note your desired route and open such gates as it requires. It follows that one cannot open red and blue gates simultaneously. As gates throughout the mine are linked, do verify your route in advance. Workers’ Weekly Wisdom: NO accidents, NO injuries, NO worries._ _–_ _Imperial Army, Officiary of Resources.”_

And another:

_“Advisory, the 1 st. Noxious vapours and fumes are an ever-present threat within the mine. Should you feel you’ve been affected, report at once to the infirmary. Workers’ Weekly Wisdom: Our workers are our greatest resource. _ _–_ _Imperial Army, Officiary of Resources.”_

And a third:

_“Advisory, the 2 nd. Should you encounter beasts within the mine, no matter how trivial, withdraw at once. A specialist crew will be dispatched to assist. Workers’ Weekly Wisdom: Discretion is the better part of valour. _ _–_ _Imperial Army, Officiary of Resources.”_

“How . . . Archadian,” Daina murmured. Polite to an extreme degree. In Dalmasca, the signs would simply have read, “Enter at your own risk.” Nabradians were more proactive; the mine would have been closed down.

“We are forewarned,” Basch replied. “These precautions point to a single threat. There is something here that should not be left loose in the mine.”

“I will release the gate,” Ashe called from nearer the entrance. “Make yourselves ready.”

She pushed the switch, the phosphor flow reversed direction and changed from red to blue, and the gate creaked open of its own accord. Solemnly, the party passed through.

The air closed tighter on them the deeper they traveled. The warrens stretched away on all sides, as complex as the inside of an ant hill. It was dark, and damp, and quiet. Their footsteps echoed, bringing more blood-drinking redmaws. One bit Larsa through his puffed sleeve, which quickly turned as red as his undershirt. The boy cried out and dropped his joyeuse. With a hammer-like swing of his icebrand, Basch smashed the bat to the floor.

While Penelo tended to Larsa, who was already laughing at a joke of Vaan’s in spite of his ruined blouse, Fran jerked her head toward the spur ahead. Her tall, leporine ears were stiff, alert, her sensitive nose twitching. She loped off, her heels pounding like tiny hammers on wet anvils, with Balthier, Ashe, and Daina following. She brought them to a rough-hewn cavern, dull and lightless. Only the memory of magicite dusted the rocks with a blue glow. A lone Imperial lay dead on the ground, his lower body crushed.

“Look at the magicite. These mines much resemble the ones at Lhusu,” Larsa said, coming up behind them. He punched one gloved fist into the opposite palm. “Of course,” he hissed. “Draklor must be searching for new sources of ore. Should the Resistance forces move, the magicite in Bhujerba will be forever beyond their grasp.”

Fran gave a little gasp, her ears swiveling. “Is it her?” she whispered. “What is this Mist? Mjrn!”

From across the cavern, a lone, slender form staggered. It was a young viera, unsteady on her coltish legs. She wore a yellow short-dress and the same black sleeves clasped at her throat as Jote and Fran. A black filigree cap topped her bobbed, straight silver hair, from which her upright ears flopped side to side with every step. Her mouth hung open, her reddish eyes half-lidded and unseeing. She stumbled onward, driven by something none of them could see.

“The stench of humes,” the young viera muttered. Her voice had a strange quality, as though more than one person were talking. “The stench of power.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Ashe whispered.

Mjrn abruptly came to life, though her wide eyes were still as blank as a doll’s. Her head swiveled around as though it was on a spike. She pointed a long, claw-like nail straight at Ashe and shouted, “Stay away! Power-needy hume!”

Ashe backed up a step, her throat and her eyes full of shocked tears. Great-chief Uball-Ka, too, had accused her of lusting after power, though not in so many words. Daina knew that these accusations upset her lady. This was what Ashe herself feared the most: That she was weak, that she was needy, that her lust for power was unclean.

Mjrn tried to escape, veering all over as though drunk. By some miracle she missed running smack into the wyrm that bounded into the room, roaring hungrily. The creature nearly filled the cavern. Its stunted wings flapped, bringing dust and pebbles down from the ceiling. Seemingly uninterested in one thin viera, the wyrm fixed its small eyes on Larsa, whose sleeve was still soaked with blood. It planted all four massive, clawed paws and roared again, tail waving. Then the monster pounced.

The party scattered. Fran bolted after Mjrn.

“Fran!” Balthier said sharply. He and Daina sprinted after them both.

Meanwhile, Larsa retaliated by sticking the joyeuse directly in the wyrm’s moist eye. It reared up, displaying its white hide, glittering with magicite dust. Then it lunged, jaws snapping shut right where Larsa had been standing. The boy danced away, nicking the wyrm but not doing any real damage.

“She is frenzied!” Ashe cried. “She will not focus on another now that she has the scent!”

“Protect Larsa!” Basch bellowed.

“Yeah,” Vaan put in. “Can’t save him if he gets eaten!”

“Thank you so much for your touching concern,” Larsa said. Hastily, he brought up the sword he used as a shield.

Four-inch fangs rang off the swordbreaker. Little Larsa fell backward with the force of the blow. The wyrm, unfazed, dove in for the kill.

Vaan came sailing in from the wyrm’s blinded side, hacking and hewing at the white hide. The wyrm backed away and came up against Basch. It tried another direction, to meet with Ashe. While Penelo helped Larsa get out of the way, the three swordsmen kept the wyrm from fleeing.

Daina did not see who struck the killing blow. Fran had halted, one hand raised toward Mjrn, her face anxious. Mjrn was barely on her feet. She uncurled the fingers of her left hand in slow motion and dropped an object on the ground. It bumped to a stop against Fran’s clawed foot: A bottle of potion minus the neck, glowing like flame encased in blue glass. Manufacted nethicite. The double of the one Penelo held.

The nethicite shattered. Its shards glowed more brightly still and then vanished.

Mjrn, eyes rolling into her head, swayed. Then she jerked as though about to vomit. An apparition burst from her back. It wavered on the air, insubstantial, white eyes aflame. Uncharacteristically clumsy, Fran stumbled backward. She bared her teeth at the floating apparition, growling low in her throat.

Mjrn toppled to the ground, separating herself from the ghostly apparition, which also vanished. Her head struck rock. She lay still.

Instantly, Fran rushed to her and gathered her into her arms.

“That thing inside her,” Vaan panted, wiping sweat and wyrm ichor out of his eyes. “What was it?”

Nobody had an answer for him.

Mjrn’s lashes fluttered. She opened her eyes, and the change in them was dramatic. They shone with a profound and shy intelligence. A smile feathered across her lips as she looked up at Fran.

“Is it you?” Mjrn breathed.

Then she went limp. She had fainted.

* * *

“When the hume soldiers came to the Wood, the village took small heed of them,” Mjrn said to them later. She sat bowed over her hands in her lap, a flower wilted by Henne Mine’s darkness. The presence of the men seemed to terrify her, so they stood back to allow her peace to talk. “So long as the Wood Herself is safe, the viera give little care to goings on beyond. But in me, uneasiness stirred. I had to discover why they had come.”

“So you came here hoping to find something out, and got yourself caught,” Balthier said. Mjrn’s frightened gaze flashed up to his face. Her dusky cheeks flushed, and she glanced back down at her empty hands. He grinned. “You’re as foolhardy as your sister.”

Fran put her arm around Mjrn’s shoulders, encouraging her.

“They took me then,” Mjrn continued, hushed, distant, “and set close beside me a stone. They said its Mist would be drawn into me, that the viera are well-suited to this end. I saw the light coming from the stone, and then –”

She stopped, horror darkening her face.

“We have seen this,” Fran said, closing her larger hand around one of Mjrn’s. “On _Leviathan,_ the Mist from the Dawn Shard drove me, too, into such a rage.”

Fran looked at Balthier. “She was taken not by the Dawn Shard.”

“Manufacted nethicite,” Larsa said, and Fran nodded in agreement. Larsa whipped around, suddenly speaking loud and fast. “Then that means – Penelo, the stone I gave you, do you still carry it with you?”

“Sure,” Penelo said. She pulled it from her pocket. “It’s right here.”

Larsa snatched it right out of her hand and jumped away from her, his blue eyes panicked, not seeing the hurt that washed across her face. He scrutinized the stone, checking for cracks in its crystal facets. “This is more danger than I had imagined. I should never have given it to you. Forgive me, I did not know.”

Penelo lifted a shoulder and tilted her head, smiling down at the boy. “I’d always thought of it as a sort of good luck charm,” she said. “And even if it is dangerous, on _Leviathan_ it kept us safe.”

Larsa smiled gratefully back up at her, but he did not return the nethicite.

“There is a place for all things, even danger such as this,” Ashe said. Whether she was trying to convince them or herself, Daina couldn’t tell.

“I hope you’re right about that,” Vaan said.

* * *

Side by side, Fran and Mjrn led the way through Eruyt Village. Jote stood in front of her sanctuary, waiting for them, her women on either side of her.

A stately viera in armor of robin’s-egg blue paced toward Vaan, holding something close to her chest.

“I heard the Wood’s whispers,” Jote said by way of an explanation. She gestured with a long-fingered hand.

Reluctantly, the blue-armored viera unfolded her arms and passed a teardrop-shaped crystal to Vaan.

“Take it,” Jote said ungraciously. “Lente’s Tear is a permission. Pass through the Wood and leave. To other places go.”

Vaan accepted the crystal, exhaled, and turned to leave.

Mjrn, so young that she was no taller than Daina, nearly knocked Vaan over when she surged forward. “That cannot be all!” she said passionately. “I saw it when I left the village! Ivalice is changing! How can the viera stand and do nothing at all!”

Jote’s expression did not soften. “Ivalice is for the humes,” she said flatly. “The Wood alone is for us.”

“But that is wrong!” Mjrn actually stamped her foot. “How can we just hide here in the trees when all the world outside is on the move! I, too, wish to live freely – to leave this Wood!”

“Do not do this,” Fran said in a low, urgent voice. “You must remain away from the humes. Stay with the Wood. Live together with the Wood. This is your way.”

Mjrn goggled at her. “But Fran – my sister!”

“I am no longer of you,” Fran said, gentle but insistent. “I have discarded Wood and village. I won my freedom. Yet my past has been cut away forever. No longer can my ears hear the Green Word. This solitude you want, Mjrn?”

“Sister,” Mjrn begged.

“No, Mjrn. Only one sister remains to you now. You must forget my existence.”

Devastated, Mjrn fled, dry sobs scattering from her lips.

There was a short silence while the gathered viera merely watched. Then Jote looked up.

“I am sorry to make you do this,” she said. For once, she sounded so.

“She goes against the laws of the Wood,” Fran said with something very like a shrug. “I threw down these laws. It is better that I do this. Better I than one who must uphold these laws herself.”

Jote nodded at her women. One by one, the assembled viera slipped away, leaving Jote alone with Fran and the humes.

Fran broke the silence first. “I have a request,” she said in a small voice that cracked. “Listen to the Wood’s voice for me? I fear – I fear She hates.”

Jote cast her spell, breathing in the magickal wind that lifted her hair. When it died down, she opened her wise, ageless eyes and fixed Fran with a look of deep love. “The Wood longs for you,” she whispered. “For the child gone from under Her boughs.”

Unexpectedly, Fran chuckled. “A pleasant lie, that,” she teased.

She turned away, but Jote said, “Be cautious. The Wood is jealous of the humes who have taken you.”

“I am as them now, am I not?” Fran asked. She looked over her shoulder. “Goodbye, sister.”

Thus, she left Eruyt Village for the last time, pausing only once to ensure that her friends were with her. They welcomed her, a tight-knit group of humes smiling up at the tall viera in their midst, even Balthier. Fran, head high and shoulders straight, did not look back.

* * *

Lente’s Tear did as promised. When Vaan brought it near one of the barriers, the magick faded to a thin film. They were able to pass through, much like walking into a spider’s web. A few viera wood-warders met them with unyielding hostility, however, ill-naturedly wishing them luck on their trek to the deeper areas of the jungle.

But not all monsters preferred the deep.

The creature must have been asleep for a thousand years or more, for it was indistinguishable from the mossy boulders surrounding it. When it tasted magick on the air – whether Lente’s Tear or Penelo’s scrolls, Daina couldn’t tell – it stirred, separating itself from the ground with the cracking of uprooted vegetation. Penelo screamed. Vaan nearly pulled his chocobo off its feet. The chocobo kweh kwehed, wings flapping. Two treants, the golem tree-guardians of the jungle, tumbled off the elder wyrm’s boulder-like back like a couple of brown pill bugs, and then rushed forward to attack.

Fran nimbly leaped to the ground, releasing an aero spell. The magickal wind tore through the first treant’s torso, cracking it open like a nut. The rough-thewed arms and huge hands lost all strength; the tiny, withered legs hanging between them shuddered convulsively, and the golem crashed into the bracken. However, the elder wyrm was now fully awake. Its wings and barbed tail slammed into the trees, which caused a choking sporefall that incapacitated Fran and her sensitive viera nose. Balthier wrenched his chocobo around and sent it barreling into the second treant to protect her.

“Majesties, stay back,” Basch said.

He handed Larsa over to Ashe. Her blindfolded chocobo kwehed in distress at the feel of another rider, backing away from the noise and confusion.

The mossy wyrm stomped around, its claws digging deep furrows into the wet earth. Although Daina’s chocobo was not war-bred, she gathered the reins in one hand, drew the kogarasumaru with the other, and charged. It was a brutal, bloody battle, one that quickly wore Penelo out as she struggled to keep everyone awake and healthy with esuna spells. Basch, Daina, and Vaan fought the enraged creature, coughing on and blinded by the spores in the air. It wasn’t until a well-aimed shot from Balthier’s sirius punctured one of the wyrm’s eyes that Daina was able to sneak in and whisk the kogarasumaru through its jugular. A torrent of ichor flooded out, hot and sticky. Her chocobo panicked, throwing her.

The wyrm tore the chocobo apart before it died, its gargantuan heart finishing what Daina’s blade had started, pumping the last of the wyrm’s ichor into the earth. Its body collapsed, becoming nothing more than a hump of moss and pink flowers, to defend the jungle no more.

* * *

Daina’s collarbone was broken. She tried to get up but fell back into the mulch of the wyrm’s lair as a line of agony painted fire across her right side. Then she cursed. Loudly.

Her eloquence brought aid.

“Here, drink this,” Larsa said, holding a bottle to her lips.

The hi-potion tasted of liquor, and she pushed it away, revolted. Feeling slightly drunk, she stood while her clavicle and much of her arm numbed. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she gasped.

“I am impressed with your skill, Lady Praeities,” he responded. He capped the half-emptied restorative.

Bits of bracken adhered to her coat, were tangled in her hair. The wyrm’s ichor, the color of walnut dye, stained the green fabric brown. She sighed.

“When I was a child, I used to pretend I was a wyrmslayer,” she said. She eyed the harmless pile of mossy boulders. “The reality is nothing like the fantasy. It was far from a clean kill, my lord, though I thank you for your courtesy. My chocobo is dead, and I seem to have lost my sword.”

“It is here.” Basch, strode toward them, Daina’s kogarasumaru in his hand. He held it out to her, hilt first, the green tassel swinging. His odd, not-quite-a-smile played around his mouth.

“Not all good kills are clean,” he said.

Daina considered him, and his words. In a way, he was asserting himself as her superior, a captain proud of one of his soldiers, rather than as a man interested in a woman. She decided that was acceptable. For two years, she’d successfully served her lady under Vossler in the same capacity. If she was smitten, it wasn’t his problem; it was hers, and she would deal with it accordingly. She closed her fingers around the kogarasumaru’s grip. His lifted away without making contact, but his smile grew. She straightened her shoulders. Good enough.

“What are we going to do?” Vaan asked, scrubbing the back of his head. “We’re down a chocobo.”

Before the thought that tried to push itself to the forefront of her mind could formulate, Daina turned to Ashe. “My lady, if I may?”

“Of course,” Ashe said.

The two women settled on Ashe’s chocobo, Daina behind her princess, while Basch and Larsa mounted theirs. They could not risk both majesties on a single bird, and their weight was now spread as evenly as possible across their mounts. Slower than before, for three of their chocobos were burdened with two riders apiece, they traveled through the steadily cooling air and uphill, suspended paths of Golmore safely.

Night had fallen by the time they emerged from the jungle, soft and silver-gray where frostbitten ferns and petrified moss opened out to a rocky ravine several inches deep in snow drifts. A little patch of wild onions wriggled out of the frozen ground, oddly nonviolent considering their relation to the deadly nightshade. The childlike plants danced around, their bulbous heads splitting in stinky onion grins, as Ashe and Basch pulled the blindfolds off their chocobos like falconers releasing their birds to a hunt. The chocobos kwehed happily at their freedom. Sturdy legs pumping, they galloped up the winding, snowy slopes of Paramina Rift. Daina pressed herself against her lady, wrapping her arms around Ashe’s waist and laying her cheek on her shoulder, attempting to conserve warmth between their bodies. The wind whistling past her ears was achingly cold.

Balthier, in the lead, slowed. He then guided his chocobo to the side of the trail and continued at a more civilized pace. The others copied him. Daina saw a group of ragged people making their way up the mountain. One elderly man clung to a seeq’s wide, flabby back. The seeq grunted with each step, his long, pierced ears swinging across his bare chest. Children lacking shoes staggered forward like sleepwalkers, their small hands engulfed by the chapped, reddened fists of their parents. Refugees, Daina realized, headed for the sanctum of Mt. Bur-Omisace to seek alms from the kiltias.

Since its founding two thousand years ago, the Light of Kiltia had willingly abandoned the power to influence the government, and the kiltias were thereafter forbidden to enter politics. Sanctuary was there for all who sought it. Holy Mt. Bur-Omisace remained a neutral territory within war-torn Ivalice.

“Empire parades down city streets, while refugees walk barefoot through the snow,” Balthier commented sourly once they were past.

Larsa clenched his fists on his thighs. “And so I sue for peace to stop short war and ease their suffering. My father _will_ choose peace.”

“Will he now? You sound sure of yourself. You can never know another, even your father.” With this bitter philippic, Balthier rode away.

Dejection settled over Larsa, his eyes, though fixed on the back of Basch’s vest, unseeing.

“Don’t take it the wrong way, okay?” Vaan said softly, but Larsa did not reply.

They rode to the peak of the mountain itself. It rose majestically out of the clouds into the clear, starry, false-dawn of extremely high altitude. Barely visible in the light of the fading moon, rings of tiny, uninhabited purvama islands floated serenely around the steep mountain. More than ten thousand refugees had found their way to the snow-free peak, praising the kiltias for rescuing them from war, from fiends, and from homelessness.

“Me?” one man in rags said, seeming pleased that a girl as pretty as Penelo would speak to him. “I was born in Nabradia. My village was burned to the ground in the war two years ago, and I made my way here.” He scratched the back of his shoulder and then looked away from her. “I envy you Dalmascan folk. Even an occupation’s better than seeing your home and everything you loved reduced to a pile of ashes.”

He was right. Daina closed her eyes, trying to compose her face and swallow the swelling in her heart. She was one of the lucky few, who had managed to hold a place and a purpose for herself in another land, as Basch had. She wondered if any more of her countrymen had made it to Bur-Omisace. Twenty years ago, Landisian survivors had sought shelter with the kiltias, and there had been few enough then. Years of empire expansion had filled the temple grounds to bursting with peoples of all lands.

She, Ashe, and the others guided their weary birds into a sand-strewn pass, consigned them to the public stables, and then made their way on foot through the refugee camp to the great temple in the center of the compound. It was built right into the cliff face, an austere complex of sandy stone and three domes of verdigrised copper. A sea of clouds lapped at its base, what could be seen of Ivalice below condensed into the shifting blues of an ocean.

An aged, white-furred acolyte caught Vaan watching the slow spin of the rocks orbiting the peak and shuffled up next to him, his tail dragging on the ground. “The islands floating in the sky are said to be the remains of a great sky continent, shattered and fallen long ago.” The nu mou tightened furry fingers on his walking staff and sniffed the air like a hume savoring the scent of galbana lilies. “Even now, they bleed power, robbing airships of their buoyancy.”

Vaan nodded. The jagd was part of what made Bur-Omisace the perfect refuge, a natural barrier to modern technology.

“I ask that you remain quiet while in the Hall of the Light,” the nu mou acolyte added, patting Vaan’s elbow, which was as high as his hunched form could reach. “His Grace is a dreamsage, and must have silence. He has known of your coming for some time. Do not disturb his meditation.”

Warmth flowed through the temple doors. Some of the ache eased out of Daina’s recently broken collarbone. Their footsteps echoed into empty space. There was no other sound within the temple. As they walked along the bridge that led to the inner sanctum, Daina took note of the billowy folds of canvas drawn back from the ceiling, secured with thick gold ropes to allow the light direct entry. Mineral springs bubbled into pools along the walls and breathed fragrant steam into the air, faintly like rotten eggs. Decorative, polished copper spheres shone in the strengthening dawn. She worried at first that the hour was far too early for an audience, but the nu mou acolytes, looking like hunched little mounds of discarded laundry in their robes, bowed them through to the inner sanctum.

A massive statue of the prophet Kiltia, a hume surrounded by the light of twelve carved emerald flames, graced the far wall of the sanctum. Two thousand years ago, the prophet had received a vision of benevolent gods watching fondly over their creation from their heaven and sought to spread the message of their glory. He turned out to be more successful than even he had dreamed; the faithful across Ivalice followed the pantheon of gods introduced by Kiltia so long ago, which was led by Faram, the Scion of Light.

The current Gran Kiltias was a helgas, one of the last of his kind. He stood tall and willowy in front of the statue, his body hidden under the white robes of his faith. Golden clasps kept the maroon surcoat closed over his sunken chest. His pointed ears parted his age-whitened hair, and a fur-like beard obscured his time-ravaged face. He did not acknowledge their appearance; his eyes were closed and his chin rested on his chest. Perhaps it was too early after all. Larsa and Ashe approached him and halted, waiting.

For several minutes, nobody said anything.

“Is he sleeping?” Vaan asked.

Several furious _“shh!”_ flew at him and he flinched, but then Gran Kiltias Anastasis spoke and Vaan straightened as though he’d been jabbed by something sharp.

“No, my child,” Anastasis said. Not with his vocal chords. Daina didn’t hear him with her ears. She heard him in her thoughts. His lips weren’t moving, the gray skin of his face slack. “I do not sleep. I dream.”

Daina tensed but saw startled looks pass across the faces of her friends as well. They could all hear him, then.

The deep, slow, aged thought-voice exuded comfort. “For reality and illusion are a duality, two parts of a whole. Only the mirror of dreams reflects what is true.”

Ashe stepped forward respectfully. “Anastasis, Your Grace, I am Ashelia –”

“Lay down your words,” the old voice commanded, and her mouth snapped shut. “Ashelia, daughter of Raminas, I have dreamt your dream. Who better to carry on the Dalmascan line than she who bears the Dawn Shard? Your dream of a kingdom restored is known to me.”

“Gran Kiltias, then give us your blessing.” Larsa gestured at Ashe. “Grant the Lady Ashe her accession –”

He wasn’t able to finish. From behind them, this time, the interruption came.

A self-assured male voice, rolling its _r’s_ in the Rozarrian way, said, “I do not suppose this is something you might reconsider?”

* * *

Daina turned to the doors behind them.

“My little emperor-in-waiting,” drawled the amused, affectionate, and cultured Rozarrian voice. “You called, and I have come.”


	7. Interlude, part six

Larsa extended a hand to the dark-haired nobleman that strode through Daina’s friends as if they were curtains, expecting them to bow out of his way. The Rozarrian wore a striped blue shirt, unbuttoned to reveal his olive-toned chest and its dusting of dark curls, and white trousers that someone must have painted on. A pair of sunglasses hid the upper half of his face.

A dark-haired woman, her expression set in rehearsed blankness, stuck to the noble’s elbow. Her raiment was far more subdued: a dark blouse, the sleeves elbow-length, a blue ribbon necktie, and dark, slim trousers.

Bypassing Larsa’s outstretched hand, the noble patted the boy on the head with a grin.

Larsa pushed him away, smoothing his rumpled hair. He resignedly said to Ashe, “This is the man I wanted you to meet. Believe it or not, he is a member of the noble House Margrace, rulers of the Rozarrian Empire.”

“I am but one of very, very many,” the dark man demurred, putting his hand over his heart as though wounded. “Try as I might, I could not stop this war alone. Thus I came seeking Larsa’s assistance.” He removed his sunglasses. Like oiled machinery, his handmaid plucked them out of his hand and tucked them into the front of her blouse. He introduced himself with typical Rozarrian flair. “Al-Cid Margrace, at your service. To think I stand before the Lady Ashe. It is truly an honor.”

Larsa sighed, rolling his eyes.

Al-Cid knelt and kissed Ashe’s hand, his face suggesting he could conceive no greater pleasure. “I see it is true after all. Ah, stunning is Dalmasca’s desert bloom.”

Penelo put her hands over her mouth, blushing, but Daina frowned. Such overblown niceties offended her. They bothered Balthier, too, for he tightened his crossed arms and looked away. However, since Ashe did not object – nor did she invite further displays – Daina squashed the impulse to intercede.

Anastasis dream-spoke. “In Archades, Larsa. In Rozarria, Al-Cid. They dream not of war. Should empire join with empire, the way will open for a new Ivalice in our time.”

“Gran Kiltias,” Al-Cid said with a shout of laughter, his western passion unabashed in the presence of so much hushed dignity. “You speak much of dreams. But in the real world, war is upon us.”

“Gran Kiltias,” Ashe interjected. “I was told my coming here would prevent this war. I was to assume my father’s throne and announce the restoration of Dalmasca, treat with the Empire for peace, and persuade the Resistance to stay their hand. I have not come all this way to be asked to reconsider!”

Al-Cid waved his hand. “A word from you and the Resistance would stop cold, and Rozarria’s pretext for joining the war, scattered, off to the four winds. This is was what we had hoped. Alas, circumstances change. A full two years have passed since your reported death. Were it to become known you were still alive, I fear it could only worsen our current situation.”

“Because I am powerless to help.” Ashe’s hands, which she had clasped in her plea to the Gran Kiltias, dropped.

“Nay,” Al-Cid said, shaking his dark head. “In fact, it has little to do with you.”

“Then what?” Larsa put in. “If Lady Ashe were to extend her hand in friendship, perhaps I could then persuade the emperor. His Excellency will solve things peacefully –”

For the second time, Al-Cid interrupted the young prince. “The Emperor Gramis is no more,” he said. “His life was taken.”

Larsa’s face drained of color, his blue eyes widening in horror. “Father!”

“No,” Daina breathed, fervently echoed by Penelo. Al-Cid took no notice of them.

“The word is that Chairman Gregoroth, of the Senate, poisoned His Excellency and then took his own life in shame. The Imperial Senate has been dissolved, and Vayne has been declared a _temporary_ autocrat.” Al-Cid delicately stressed the word. “We all know that once accepted, power is not so easily returned, no?”

Larsa seemed to shrink, his soul fleeing somewhere far away from them, unreachable. He said nothing more.

After a compassionate pause, Al-Cid turned again to Ashe.

“Let us suppose you approach the Empire with a peaceful resolution. The late Emperor Gramis would have lent you his ear, that much is certain. But we are dealing with Vayne Solidor.” He wagged his finger in the air, the laces of his black leather bracers wagging as well. “Should the princess return, he would claim her an imposter. All to tempt the Resistance into battle. Vayne wants this war. As our ill luck would have it, the man is a military genius.”

“The dreams have told me thus,” Anastasis agreed. “To reveal yourself would imperil us all. I see war, and Vayne’s name writ bold on history’s face.”

“Archadian banners fly high. They are making ready for the coming war,” Al-Cid said. Like an extension of his arm, his handmaid whipped a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to him. He opened it with an unnecessary flick of the wrist. “The Western Armada prepares for war,” he read, “under Vayne’s command, no less. The newly formed 12th Fleet has already been deployed. The Imperial 1st Fleet stands ready. They’ll be underway as soon as the _Odin’s_ refit is complete. And there is more: the 2nd Kerwon Expeditionary Force is being called in to replace the missing 8th so there will be no gaps. The largest force ever seen!”

The same flair: Al-Cid folded the paper, passed it over his shoulder to his handmaid, and she slipped it into her pocket.

“And then . . .” Ashe lowered her head, thinking. “The nethicite is the coup de grâce.”

Al-Cid nodded, and Ashe turned with renewed vigor to Anastasis. “Gran Kiltias, Your Grace. I spoke to you of my succession. Let us put that aside. Should I become Queen of Dalmasca now, powerless as I am, I can protect nothing. With a greater power at my disposal, perhaps then.”

“It is the nethicite of which you dream?”

Ashe shook her flaxen head. “I require something far greater.”

Startling them all, Anastasis’s eyes popped open. He spoke to them aloud, his fangs flashing behind his withered lips. “To wield power against power. Truly the words of a hume-child.”

“I am descended from the Dynast-King himself,” Ashe said defensively.

“Indeed.” The helgas’s feral eyes narrowed. “Then you have but one choice. Seek you the other power Raithwall left.”

“Does such a thing exist?” Ashe breathed.

“Journey across the Paramina Rift to the Stilshrine of Miriam. There rests the gift he entrusted to the Gran Kiltias of his time. Seek it out. The Sword of Kings can cut through nethicite.” Anastasis took a long, slow breath, eyes drifting shut. His sudden vitality seemed to float away like a leaf in a stream. “Why he would entrust the power to destroy nethicite, the instrument of his greatness, to another and not to his own progeny, I cannot say. Awaken, Ashelia B’nargin, and take up your sword, or your dream will remain but a dream.”

With a little bow, Ashe turned away. She paused momentarily to look at Larsa, who had not moved and did not acknowledge her, and then she left the temple.

* * *

Once they rested and provisioned themselves to travel through the blizzards currently raging across Paramina Rift, they retrieved the Sword of Kings from the stilshrine at the foot of Karydine Glacier with very little trouble. Only an esper caused a slight delay. An evil, fishlike being with red scales and flowing blue fins, it accosted them with deadly blizzaja magick. The esper used a mermaid from the domain of ice as a living shield, her hands bound and eyes concealed by a blindfold. Though Vaan clearly did not wish to harm the mermaid, he struck the final blow to gain the esper’s crystal and its name: Mateus. The hapless mermaid sobbed and cried out laments in a language unknown when The Corrupt greedily pulled her into his crystal with him. Vaan stared for a long time into the crystal’s Misty depths, his face twisted in regret. But once Mateus and his icy captive were no longer in the way, the path to their goal was clear.

The Sword of Kings turned out to be an ungainly, over-decorated thing, a greatsword almost too heavy for Ashe to lift, but lift it she did.

“This is the sword,” she confirmed, looking through its lozenge-shaped prongs. “The nethicite-destroyer.”

Basch hefted it easier than the slender Ashe had, wrapped it in canvas, and slung it over his own shoulder.

“With this proof of Her Highness’s lineage and the power to combat the shards Vayne holds, we must return to Mt. Bur-Omisace as quickly as possible,” Daina said, and Basch nodded.

She turned to go, leading the way out of the stilshrine, trusting that he would remain by Her Majesty. Daina had discovered in the trek over the glacier that if she didn’t hover by Ashe, she wouldn’t have to repel Basch’s awkward chivalry. Since Basch was her lady’s shield, then Daina was her sword. Her kogarasumaru and the ashura swung true through the magickal and bestial guardians of the stilshrine, and she cleared the way for Ashe.

She didn’t walk alone.

“What is it with this Raithwall guy?” Vaan asked. He clambered around the remains of a facer statue that they had dispatched on the way in. “Living statues, labyrinth puzzles. This stuff is just weird.”

“Didn’t you know?” Penelo asked him, surprised. “His tomb and this shrine were built during the Galtean Alliance. Raithwall’s alliance. The one he started,” she hinted.

“All right, I got it. You don’t have to harp on it.”

“The Galtean Alliance was a monumental moment in Ivalice’s history. All the great nations, including the fledgling city-states of Rozarria and Archadia, came together in peace,” Daina said. She shared a grin with Penelo when Vaan groaned at them.

“Not much is known about the Stilshrine of Miriam, though,” Penelo added, gazing around at the whimsical architecture.

“I asked the kiltias about it,” Daina said. “It was named after a god of swords and martial might. No one remembers why Raithwall chose to leave the sword with the kiltias and not keep it for himself, though.”

“And the esper?” Vaan asked. He rubbed his side through his sash, where a small lump betrayed the amethyst in which Mateus slept. Daina wondered if it was cold, like a chunk of ice.

Penelo shrugged. “I guess he had more than one.”

“That Dynast-King must have really been something,” Vaan said, stealing a glance at Ashe from the corners of his eyes.

“Maybe he was nothing at all,” Daina said. “Maybe it was his friends who were great.”

“Oh! That must be it,” Penelo said in delight, clapping her hands.

After saddling their chocobos and mounting up, Daina rode beside the beautiful Fran. When with Fran, Balthier was never far.

Daina watched the sky pirates carefully, not quite understanding their relationship. They behaved like an old married couple, each aware of every move the other made but not particularly enamored by it. Nor did they ever touch. They were comfortable, their flirtation so subdued it was almost nonexistent. _Partners,_ Balthier had called himself and the viera.

What was it Fran had said to him? _You have let your eyes betray your heart._ Balthier seemed as much aware of Ashe as Fran, his eyes often turned toward the princess with a sort of wistful confusion. Fran saw this, and she smiled.

This was what it meant to be an adult, Daina supposed, and she strove to emulate the other woman. She would let Basch go to live his life so she could live hers.

Astride their chocobos, bundled against the sharp wind that blew the existing clouds away and brought new, their party made it across the glacier and halfway through the rift before an ominous thrumming from overhead necessitated a halt.

An Archadian fleet sailed by, once more operating flawlessly through the jagd, toward Mt. Bur-Omisace and its orbiting collection of purvama. The ships moved inexorably, taking no notice of them, though Daina and the others were strung along the paths of snow and iced-over rivers like fallen gil, bright yellow in the sun.

“What do they want now?” Balthier wondered aloud.

“Research,” Basch suggested.

Balthier gave him such a dirty look that Basch subsided.

“We’d better hurry,” Ashe said.

When the chocobos and their riders reached the foot of the holy mountain three hours later, Fran pointed. “There!”

Smoke, a thin tendril of black against the impossibly blue sky, rising from the mountain’s peak. The Archadian fleet was gone.

Ashe shouted, “We must hurry!”

Their chocobos charged ahead, kicking up enough snow and ice to leave a blizzard in their wake. The scenes that met them in the sand-strewn pass were a horrible portent of the war to come. Unusually high clouds occluded the sun. It began to rain, freezing needles of water that soaked hair and clothing. Everywhere they looked, they saw signs of a one-sided battle: tents and food stands torn down and set on fire, bloodied refugees huddled around their few possessions, shell-shocked kiltias lost in prayers. Hunched nu mou acolytes made their way to the wounded, their tails and the under-robes of their office trailing along the wet ground and slowly turning black with grime, their teal jackets gray in the rain, their canine faces mournful. The airy architecture of the temple compound was scarred, shattered, and burned.

“The Empire’s debts grow legion,” Ashe growled. She brazenly rode her chocobo all the way up to the temple’s approach. She flung herself to the ground with little care for the bird and raced through the open doors. Daina was fast on her heels. Leaping new, smoking craters in the bridge, they pelted up to the inner sanctum of the Gran Kiltias.

A judge magister stood in front of the destroyed statue, a curved, spiked sword in his hand. The prophet had been toppled, the twelve emerald flames that represented the gods hanging pointlessly around nothing.

“Ah, our vagrant princess,” the judge rumbled, an imposing wall of adamantine and steel. “Swift has your lust for revenge led you to the Sword of Kings.”

He stepped aside, just far enough for them to see Anastasis prone on the floor. He was not moving.

“You will surrender it to me. Too late, and to their sorrow do those who misplace their trust in gods learn their fate,” the judge said. He held out his hand imperiously, walking toward them.

He began to glow. Silky, eldritch blue light caressed the designs in his judicer’s plate. For the briefest instant, an apparition bloomed from his back and stared at them through flame-white eyes.

“There it is again,” Vaan whispered.

“Fran, I don’t like the look of that,” Balthier said.

Her ears swiveled in alarm. “This Mist – he holds a stone! It controls him as it did Mjrn!”

“No.” The judge burst out laughing. He stretched, displaying his strength. “No, the power of manufacted nethicite is the power of Man! A weapon forged by his wisdom, who would challenge the gods themselves! A fitting blade for a true Dynast-King. Raithwall did but pretend the title, a cur begging nethicite scraps from his master’s table. Hark!” He was panting by then, the sound exaggerated by his helm, his words going thick and viscous with each heavy breath and a leer none of them could see. He drew a second sword, crafted like a spiked meat chopper. “Ivalice hails her true Dynast-King, Vayne Solidor! He shall defy the will of the gods, and see the reins of history back in the hands of Man! His time is nigh! The new Ivalice holds no place for the name Dalmasca.”

His steps quickened. He gathered speed like an ancient steam-powered engine, bringing the wicked swords to bear. Daina thrust Ashe behind her and drew the kogarasumaru, ready to meet and defeat this savage madman. Basch stood tall at her side.

“The stain of Raithwall’s blood shall be washed clean from history’s weave!” the judge screamed. He brought the swords down.

Daina met them, and nearly buckled under his power – such unnatural strength!

She shot a glance at the figure stretched upon the ruined floor behind the judge. Anastasis, if not dead, could not wait much longer for aid. She glared up at the featureless helm hovering over her, reminiscent of a queen in the game of chess. It wasn’t just her life she was defending, it was the Gran Kiltias’s, it was Ashe’s, it was Dalmasca’s – it was for Ivalice that she could not fail. She slid out from under the judge’s swords, blade scraping against blade with a terrible squeal, and went on the offensive.

* * *

_Like this, Daina. Think of it as an extension of your arm. Do not fight it. Let the blade be your teacher._

Her father’s words, spoken twelve years past. She had lived the way of the sword ever since. It wasn’t about brute powerhouse strength. The maddened judge was making that mistake, battering relentlessly at Daina in his insane drive to reach Ashe. It was about skill. Strategy. Experience gained along the road added to lessons learned by rote. Unlike this crazed judge, she knew whether to press an advantage or to give ground.

The temple’s approach was narrow and long, a strip of plush carpeting flanked by fat pillars and quiet pools. The judge was not alone, of course; the sounds of strife penetrated Daina’s awareness. Her friends were fighting, somewhere behind her. She hoped they would all make it out of this alive.

Ashe called upon the esper, Belias. The gigas, lightly for a creature of such enormity, hopped into the fray, shunting the judge away from its summoner with its four arms and giant ax. The lesser judges fell, one by one, staining the carpet and the quiet pools with their blood.

“Are you all right?” Basch asked Daina, sending shivers coursing through her. She nodded. When the gigas yielded a few minutes later, its power drained, they took up the fight once more. By then, however, the nethicite-augmented judge was nearing the last of his own reserves.

Weirdly, he backed away from them, swinging his swords at the empty air. The swings grew more violent, and he growled like an angry mongrel. It looked as though he was trying to fend off an unseen attacker. Finally, he ceased his assault and began to scream. His plate burst open from within like a kernel of corn popping. Visible, white-hot Mist streamed out in a torrent. The corpse fell, limbs akimbo, its entire torso mangled beyond recognition.

The silence made Daina’s ears ring. She cleaned off the kogarasumaru and sheathed it. The judge, consumed by his Mist madness, had forgotten the way of the sword, and he had paid the price for it.

Balthier knelt by the steaming corpse to examine it. He turned away with a revolted snort, waving Vaan back. “He set his very bones about with manufacted nethicite,” he explained, sounding ill. He looked up at Penelo, his brows pinched. “The Gran Kiltias?”

Penelo’s hands hovered over the aged helgas, not quite daring to touch him. A golden tuft of phoenix down perched on his white hair. When it fluttered to the carpet with no hint of a spark, she shook her head. It was too late. Anastasis was dead. Then, her eyes widened, and she looked around in a panic. “Wait – what about Larsa?”

“Gone,” called the cultured yet strained voice of Al-Cid Margrace. “Spirited away by Judge Gabranth.”

Supported by his stoic handmaid, Al-Cid shuffled into the sanctum. When he reached Ashe, he took his arm off the girl’s shoulders and lowered himself painfully to the floor.

“You okay?” Vaan asked.

Al-Cid, who did not seem to love stating the obvious, made no reply. Tiredly, he said, “As for our young lordling, he went along – to avoid trouble, you see. But Judge Bergan had other ideas.” He gestured at the fallen judge, and then sighed, a hand pressed to his ribs. “He flew into a rage, and I was left to fend for myself.”

He fixed Ashe with an eye the hue of twilight. “Please, Princess. You must permit me to take you back with me to Rozarria.”

“So that you can protect me?” Ashe asked. Her frown betrayed her distaste at such an idea.

Al-Cid’s eyebrows rose, and he answered her in the same semi-sarcastic tone. “I would lay down my life at a single word to be sure, but I harbor no maundering delusions of valiant grandeur. Vayne has our War Pavilion jumping at shadows. They favor a preemptive strike. But you – you will convince them otherwise. You will see that they do not start this war.”

“This I cannot do,” Ashe murmured, mollified. “Forgive me. But my errand here is not yet done. I must wield the Sword of Kings, and with it bring an end to the Dusk Shard.”

“Ah, this stone,” Al-Cid purred. “Do you even know where it is?”

“I can venture a guess,” Balthier interjected. “The Draklor Laboratory. In Archades. The Empire’s weapons research begins and ends there.” Smirking, he sauntered up to Ashe, ignoring the wounded nobleman at his feet. “How soon do we leave?”

“At once,” she said, giving him a look of gratitude. She bowed her head at Al-Cid. “As for matters in Rozarria, I bid you luck.”

“So you would leave each to fend for his own. Let us hope that you are not disappointed.” Al-Cid held up his arm, and the handmaid took it across her shoulders to help him to his feet. He began to leave, but then tossed one last bit of news over his shoulder. “Ah, that’s right. Larsa left a message. ‘The differences between our two lands will fade before the shared dream of Men.’ ”

He slipped his sunglasses on and flicked them a casual salute. “My leave I take.”

Outside the temple, the driving rain worsened the atmosphere of desolation. The few remaining kiltias and their acolytes took up a vigil on the streaming steps, praying for the late Anastasis. Bereft of His Grace’s protection, Mt. Bur-Omisace was vulnerable, and already there were rumors of a terrible wyrm that raged nearby. Daina wondered how much time the priests needed to appoint a new Gran Kiltias. Until then, it would take a staggering amount of work to put the mountain back to rights. Daina bowed her head and prayed with them, hoping for a swift recovery.

Ashe watched the rain for a while from the smelly shelter of the chocobo stables. Then, she turned from the silver needles of rain to survey her ragtag entourage.

“How do you propose we reach Archades?” she asked the stable in general. “Archadia’s borders will be well guarded for fear of Rozarrian invasion. We dare not approach by air.”

“And their navy will see that the coast is watched as well,” Balthier answered her, leaning against a stall. A drowsy chocobo rested its beak on his shoulder, and he absently patted it. “No, we’ll go by foot. We’ll cross into Archadia by the Salikawood.”

At that, Daina looked up. The Salikawood. The old tree-roads used to be the main thoroughfare through Nabradia until sky travel rendered the land highways obsolete. “The easiest way to the Salikawood from here is to head north from Nalbina,” she said.

Nalbina. A shudder seemed to run through each of them as if they completed a closed circuit. So many memories they could associate with Nalbina. So many negative connotations.

“Getting that far should be half the fun,” Balthier said sardonically.

His roguish smirk helped, a little. They dispersed, some to gather provisions, others to procure lodgings for the night. Daina dismissed Basch when she and Ashe claimed their room. She drew a bath for her lady before retiring to wait her turn.

Tomorrow, they would start on a new journey that would take her home.

* * *

From the highway, Nalbina Town looked much more promising than the dingy labyrinth of a dungeon hidden beneath the fortress’s exposed bones. Avenues of palm trees nodding over the aqueducts provided much-needed shade from the sweltering sun.

The Jajim Bazaar raged along the west barbican. Nalbina was a key strategic point, now for the Empire as it had been for Dalmasca. It was a logical stopover and resupply point for anyone traveling between Old Nabradia and Dalmasca. Hawkers, shoppers, travelers, Imperials, masons, and other laborers clogged the fortress plaza. It was hot and noisy, the air full of shouts, stone dust, perfume, and the mouthwatering aromas of food.

“We’ll get separated in a crowd like that,” Daina said, dubiously eyeing the bazaar. It was packed so thick with bodies it amazed her that anyone could get anywhere. She gently backed her chocobo into the pen with the others.

“Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?” Vaan asked, grinning. He grabbed her gloved hand.

“It isn’t so bad once you’re in it,” Penelo added, grabbing her other hand. “Bazaars are fun. We grew up in one of the largest around. Let’s go see what’s for sale!”

With shining eyes, the two Dalmascans laughingly dragged Daina into the crowds.

“Wait! My lady!” Daina was no match for the two of them combined. The last glimpse she caught of Ashe was her smiling and mouthing the word, _Go._ The princess seemed content to stay behind with the chocobos and her thoughts.

The contagious atmosphere of the bazaar infected Daina with Vaan’s “sense of adventure.” She sorted through the wares at the armory while he spent 4500g for a new sword. The seeq merchant called it a lohengrin. It was a beautiful blade, coming to a finer point than his old broadsword, and embedded with sapphire and tangerine lacquer. Vaan was able to trade the broadsword and his shield, as well as a few other pieces of loot, for an expensive diamond shield as well, but by then he was out of money. Penelo laughed at him, telling him that his pockets were full of holes. However, she did buy him a steamed bun when she and Daina stopped for something to eat.

“Look, how cute!” Penelo exclaimed. She danced over to a kiosk sagging under the kind of jewelry typical of Dalmasca, exclaiming over every new bauble that caught her eye. She held up a silicon tortoiseshell choker dripping with rubies. “Look, Vaan – how is it?”

“That’s nice,” he said gamely, lacing his fingers across the back of his head.

Penelo giggled, pirouetting, so the rubies caught the sun and flashed like fire.

Daina, whose eye gravitated more toward a well-forged blade than necklaces, tilted her head back. The ruined fortress stood tall above them, its new aerodrome in operation. Airships came and went high overhead, alternately throwing the bazaar into shadow and then light. An Imperial guard stationed himself at the elevator that led up to the aerodrome. Her thoughts turned inward and backward.

Here, possibly where she was standing, Rasler had been struck down by an enemy arrow. And here, Basch had ridden with the dying prince through the heat of battle in a desperate, failed attempt to save his life. Here, King Raminas had drawn his last breaths. And here, deep in the fortress’s underbelly, Basch had been sentenced to a false death, suspended in pain, blinded and deafened by the darkness and seclusion, his innocence made into a lie so that Ivalice could condemn him a traitor and Vayne Solidor could keep a muzzle on Marquis Ondore.

“There you are,” Basch said, his low voice almost lost in the cacophony. “Her Majesty wishes to go if you are ready.”

Daina, who had not heard him approach, might have reacted with surprise, or embarrassment, or confusion. Instead, she looked up at him, her eyes tracing the scar across his brow, compassion bringing the telltale signs of tears. “How did you do it?” she asked.

For just a moment, he looked taken aback. He, too, studied the fortress. The silver chain and phoenix pendant glinted.

“It is not something I would wish to relate,” he said at last, “but I know you do not mean ill by your request. I will tell you. One loses touch with reality, after a while. Left there to rot, but not allowed to die, I forgot.”

She frowned, trying to unravel his meaning. “Forgot?”

Amber eyes met hers, not concealing the core of flame and steel inside him. They held Daina captive.

“Aye,” he said quietly. “I forgot the touch of sunlight, the caress of moonlight, the sensation of wind, of rain, and sand. I forgot the sound of voices, so much that I did not recognize my own when I cried out. The taste of food became a dream and then faded altogether – I ate because I must, and I loathed myself for it. Time had no meaning. My own body became the whole universe, with nothing existing beyond the torment. But there was one thing I did not forget – my duty as a knight. That, and only that, saved me.”

Daina, trying to imagine it, began to shake. The years yawned between them. She couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t bear it. “I’m sorry. I should never have asked such a thing. I only wanted to understand.”

“I am no longer alone. I have all of you to thank for that,” Basch answered.

He walked away to catch the attention of Vaan and Penelo, and Daina dazedly followed. It was some minutes before Penelo could be coerced away from the stand, however, and Daina slowly became aware of the jewelry in front of her eyes. One piece, in particular, seemed to jump out at her. A barrette, carved from shell or fish scale of a lustrous green, in the shape of a Nabradian primrose.

She stared at it. Birds used to roost in the dovecote at her parent’s house. Daina remembered waking in the gray of dawn to the comforting sound of them cooing under the eaves and the sweet scent of the green primroses that climbed around its base pole.

“Let’s go,” Vaan called, and Daina started.

She cast a last look at the barrette and obediently turned to follow, but Basch, frowning slightly, reached out and lifted the rose from its peg.

“A pretty thing,” he commented, and then he signaled to the merchant. He handed over the gil to pay for the barrette. Solemnly, he placed it in Daina’s hand. “Perhaps the most unbearable thing to have forgotten was beauty. A man withers fastest in a place of ugliness and despair.”

With that, he led the way out of the bazaar.

* * *

Mostly through Balthier’s means, they hired on with one of the caravans leaving Nalbina Town for the hunter’s camp on Phon Coast. The caravan’s route led it through the rugged Mosphoran Highwaste, toward the disused roads of the Salikawood beyond. The highwaste teemed with slaven wilders, worgens, vultures, pythons, and humbabas, all monstrous, none of which permitted the passing of caravans through their various lairs and nests. Additionally, it was hinted, a malevolent bomb had taken up residence in the Salikawood. The children called it King Bomb.

“We’ll be in charge of protection,” Balthier said. “I hope you don’t object to such work.”

Ashe, looking off into the middle distance, did not reply.

“That’ll be 1000g apiece,” the caravan master said, and tried for a smile, “paid when we reach the hunter’s camp and not a moment sooner, you get me? Plus 500g for every beastie sacked. Can’t say no to that, now, can you?”

“It’s up to you, Princess,” Balthier murmured.

“That will be fine,” Ashe said. She seemed distracted, however, and he let the subject drop.

The highwaste rose out of the desert, rocky and dotted with steaming springs, which sustained the floatweed and other flora that would never survive in the dry, sandy expanse of Dalmasca. Home, Daina thought, where green things grew. Where water did not hide from the sun. She clipped her new barrette into her hair, swung herself into the saddle, and prepared herself to see what had become of Nabradia.

* * *

“Vaan!”

Daina frowned. What was Penelo yelling about now?

After several days of traveling through the highwaste in the cumbersome, close-packed caravan train, they had reached the Salikawood. They had stopped to repair a broken axle and the families with small children were taking advantage of the break to have a quick meal. Laughter burst out of a group of laborers. A pair of seeqlets galloped past, trying to catch a butterfly. Every single caravaner had grown used to the vociferousness of Vaan and Penelo. No one even bothered to look up this time.

Ashe’s smooth face suffered no more than a brief flicker of irritation before she resumed her inquiry. “How long until the repairs to the gate are complete?”

“Can’t rightly say,” the bangaa merchant said, scratching the back of his scaly neck. “I heard tell some of the workers have been slacking off here in the Salikawood. That’s a moogle for ya. Best mechanics and craftsmen there are, but a lazier bunch never seen this side of the Forever After. Fact remains, we can’t get through to Phon Coast until the gate’s fixed.”

“Vaan! _Vaan!”_

Penelo again. She sounded scared. Daina and Ashe looked at each other, thanked the merchant, and started toward the increasingly frantic cries.

The Salikawood’s highways consisted of wooden bridges fortified with thick ropes, and, sometimes, the branches of the trees themselves, wide enough to accommodate four chocobos walking abreast and worn flat by the passage of many feet. It was a dense forest, with less of the creeping vines and gloominess of Golmore Jungle and more wildflowers. The ground, wreathed in shallow lakes so far below, was lost in misty green.

“Vaan, get back!”

That was Basch. The two women quickened their strides.

An explosion somewhere ahead of them rocked the weather-beaten planks under their feet. Ashe fetched up against a wagon, but Daina sprinted toward the source of the commotion, pushing frightened rubberneckers out of her way. Black, gritty smoke billowed across the caravan train, stinking of sulfur.

“It’s the bomb!” someone shrieked.

“King Bomb!”

“We’re all going to die!”

A second explosion sent Daina sprawling. Leaves, twigs, and sparks rained down on her. A few broken, flaming planks crashed onto the road as well. The merchants and passengers scattered, screaming. Panicked chocobos yanked at their tethers and traces, kwehing, flapping up a storm of large yellow feathers.

“Are you all right?” Ashe asked. She helped Daina to her feet.

“Just got the breath knocked out of me,” Daina wheezed.

Bent like an old woman, she followed Ashe into the clouds of smoke. They were so thick that she couldn’t see. Eyes watering, trying to hold her breath until she was in the clear, she turned this way and that. She prayed for a sign of Basch, of Vaan, or Penelo. Why couldn’t she hear Penelo?

Distracted, Daina wasn’t quick enough to bring the kogarasumaru to bear when the first bomb bounded at her out of the concealing smoke, pulsating like a hectic heart. Ashe intercepted it with her flame shield and sent it spinning away.

“What are bombs doing here?” the princess cried.

Bombs were relics of past wars, gunpowder contained in a spherical metal shell carved all over with glyphs and sigils and then given life with powerful fire magick. Four of these hume-sized bombs danced around, kept aloft by their intense heat, their stubby arms flailing, their wicked mouths open wide like rents in the earth to spew lava and flame, their maddened, swirling eyes seeming to fix on everything at once. As Daina watched, the biggest one gave a cry for help, and a fifth bomb materialized. The smoke was beginning to clear as a cool, damp breeze washed through the trees and set singed leaves fluttering.

“They’re rogue,” Daina guessed. “Probably set free when their magi handlers died in the battle two years ago. They aren’t smart enough to realize that they no longer have a purpose.”

Vaan lay on his back, his face and arms soot-blackened, the lohengrin beyond his reach.

“Vaan!” Penelo screamed. Arc scale in hand, she ran at him, but three bombs converged on her and she squealed.

“Penelo!” Daina shouted in alarm. “Get back!”

The girl threw her arms over her head and retreated. From the far side of the swarm, spears of magickal ice froze two of the bombs; the third, but lightly touched, swelled. Its parody of a face seemed to laugh – and then it exploded, blowing a hole through the walkway.

Daina hadn’t realized Fran was present, but the viera instantly started another blizzara spell. Balthier was there as well. Vaan scrambled back to his feet, and chased one of the bombs down. Ashe went to assist him, their two swords flashing in the bomb light.

“Penelo!” Daina ran to her. “You have to get back. It’s too dangerous here.”

“But Vaan!” Tears streamed down the younger girl’s face.

Desperately, Daina cast around for aid and appealed to the sky pirate’s gallantry. “Balthier, get her out of here!”

“No!” Penelo shouted. “I have to help Vaan!”

“Another explosion like that one, and who’s going to help you?” Balthier asked, smearing ash through his sweaty, honey-brown hair when he smoothed it back. Paying Penelo’s protests no mind, he put his shoulder in her middle and scooped her up, bearing her away. She kicked and sobbed in vexation.

Daina didn’t wait to make sure they got clear before she joined the battle. The bombs zipped around like giant, crazy bumblebees, biting, slapping, and slinging fira magick. If she and the others didn’t deal enough damage to one before its fuse ran out, the bomb exploded, sending shockwaves through the Salikawood. Fran’s repeated cura spells soaked into Daina like cooling rain.

When they finally whittled the swarm down to one last bomb, big as a wyrm, all five of them converged on it – for, as Daina saw with weakening relief, Basch was there, although he looked a little worse for wear.

King Bomb, however, chose to self-destruct. It landed with a thump and rolled into a slight dip in the planks. It lay there comically, its grin upside down, its useless arms undulating. An aureole of flame erupted around it. The fiery skin peeled away, leaving the black shell behind. Everyone took one startled look at it, turned, and sprinted for the far end of the walkway.

The ensuing explosion ripped the Salikawood asunder.

* * *

“Ouch,” Daina said under her breath. Like the others, she gathered herself together, brushing debris off her clothes, picking bloody splinters out of her knees. Her ears were ringing. She felt like a potato that had recently been mashed.

_“What did you do?”_ Ashe hissed, glaring at Vaan.

“You must not blame him, Highness,” Basch said. He sighed when she transferred her furious gaze to him. Gently, he explained. “A craftsmoogle came this way first and unwittingly garnered the creature’s attention. Vaan was only trying to assist her.”

“Great. What do we do now?” Daina asked.

As one, they surveyed the damage to the walkway. It was completely destroyed. A large crowd of caravaners stood at the edge of the far side, Balthier and Penelo in the fore. A fawn-furred moogle, her paws pressed over her mouth, shook from turquoise pompon to tiny booted toe next to them.

Fran strode up to the drop-off. She peered over the edge, measured the distance of the gap with her eyes. Her lips pursed and she shook her silver head. Ruefully, Balthier crossed his arms.

“Looks like you’ll have to find another way around,” he called.

Fran gestured with one long-nailed hand. “The gate that we must pass is to the south and east, but we must go north and west first to seek another path.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he said. “Meet you at the gate. Don’t be late, now.”

“I’m sorry, Penelo,” Vaan mumbled.

* * *

The further they traveled to the northwest, the thicker the Mist twined around their ankles and twinkled in their eyes. It was different than the Mist that had manifested in Raithwall’s tomb. Like a beast lurking out of sight, it toyed with their senses, often leading one of them to the edge of a walkway that wasn’t there. Its cloying tendrils hid all but the most determined of monsters. Blackened malboro kings, aggressive vegetables that resembled enormous heads of cabbage, used their many eyestalks to spy them out, creeping up on them on tentacle-like roots. Then the cabbage heads split wide to release clouds of putrid breath out of fleshy, tooth-lined maws. White, bark-like antares mantises mimicked the trees so well that often one of the party passed under scythe-like claws unawares until the mantis buzzed to ravenous life. The gentler denizens of the Salikawood, the wyrdhares and pumpkin heads, cousins to the magickal deadly nightshade, were replaced by larger sprinters – fat, round cockatrices as green as the lakes that cooed like enormous doves – and wild brown chocobos, all unfriendly, all drunk on the vaguely threatening Mist.

Daina was having difficulty breathing. Everywhere she looked, she saw the decay of the Salikawood, the cancerous growths on the trees, the mutated, obscene flowers. Depression settled in her heart, horror clogged her throat. This was what was become of her home! A forest of sweet stench, vicious hunger hidden behind a Misty veil. For this, she had to thank House Solidor!

When the first baknamy appeared as if birthed by the Mist and chucked a white fang into their midst, wounding Fran with the sudden burst of thundara magick, Daina lost her temper.

Baknamy! In the Salikawood! The erstwhile Knights of House Nabradia would never have allowed the foul, conniving, thieving little people this close to the royal city! She removed its horned, snouted head from its compact shoulders. The child-sized body, made decent by bits of plated leather armor, its fingers and toes tipped with thick, black nails, fell backward, slid off the walkway, and disappeared from sight.

Eight more baknamy materialized out of the swirling Mist. They surrounded Daina with guns, short swords, and magick-imbued fangs torn from the skulls of dead cerberuses. They chittered at her. They pointed at her hair, her facial features, and they laughed.

So, they would laugh at the misfortune of Nabudis and her orphaned children. They would invade the once beautiful city, claim it as their own, and loot its bones.

Then they would die for it.

“May the abyss take you, hideous goblins!” she raged. The kogarasumaru drove in, piercing the closest baknamy through its chest plate. It gurgled, its round, animal eyes managing to convey agony before death glazed them over.

A split second of stunned silence followed, and then the seven remaining baknamy howled in anger. Several of them fired their guns, and the shot from the one that bothered to aim tore through Daina’s left shoulder. She ignored the pain, the warm wetness that poured down her arm, and slew another. A blue fang dissolved in her face, releasing a blast of wintry magick that blinded her.

They might have overpowered her and killed her, so outnumbered and lost in her fury was she, but she was not alone. Ashe, Vaan, Basch, and even Fran joined her. Within minutes, only two baknamy remained. The first one squawked, dancing in terror, and then vanished. It was a very simple spell that allowed the baknamy to hide in the Mist the way rats hid in a ship’s shadows. The last one swiveled its tiny bovine ears, wrinkled its snout, and bared its small, sharp teeth. Then, it flung something at Daina before it, too, vanished.

Daina, when she bent over to pick up the moldering object, gasped and fell to one knee. Blood, sticky and red, coated her glove and the kogarasumaru’s grip wrap.

Basch muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Headstrong, foolish girl.” He knelt in front of her and pressed a folded bit of cloth to her shoulder, forestalling her offended retort. First a sting, then numbness spread; he must have soaked the cloth with potion. He produced a pocket knife and proceeded to remove the shot embedded in the joint. It hurt. A lot. Daina swooned, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes.

“Here,” Ashe said. “I have one left.”

Hi-potion again. Daina grimaced at the taste and would have given it back after the first swallow, but Basch, seeming annoyed, forced her to drink it all.

She sat down and waited for the road to stop spinning. Was this how jellies felt, why they wibbled and wobbled so? She could picture them, the slimy blue monsters, jiggling like a spoonful of jam. Her stomach cramped, and she thought of other things.

“What’s that?” she heard Vaan ask.

The Mist cleared, parting like clouds before the sun. Out of the fogginess loomed a dark, hard-edged structure, tilting at a thirty-degree angle. All was desolate and dilapidated, blackened and eroded, and the _smell_ . . .

Ashe sucked in a sharp breath. Basch stepped forward, his eyes locked on the apparition – for apparition it must be, Daina thought, lightheaded.

The royal palace of Nabudis had been built in the middle of a crystalline lake, its gardens and courtyards housed within the battlements; she knew it well. For years, she and her father had spent their days there, practicing the way of the sword in one of the lower halls or in the jousting arena, riding chocobos through the training grounds. The lake-blessed seat of kings was always busy, bustling with life and servants going about their business. Lord Prince Rasler used to stand on the battlements with her father in his retinue, discussing the coming war, and once, Daina’s future.

This lifeless hulk _couldn’t_ be Verdpale Palace.

* * *

The lake was gone. The palace sat, sunken and crooked, in a marsh. It was utterly still and silent except for the twinkling, nauseating Mist. The marsh and the Salikawood fused together here; Daina had not realized her boots trod on mud rather than the tree-roads.

“This is all that remains of Nabudis,” Basch told Vaan, confirming Daina’s fears. “Two years ago it was destroyed by a mysterious force. The work of the Midlight Shard.”

“This? In just two years?” Vaan gazed open-mouthed at the ruins, which seemed to have been there for a millennium or more. “How?”

“As the Dawn Shard brought down _Leviathan,_ a fell Mist spilled forth,” Basch reminded him. “It is like the same thing happened here. The Mist has corrupted the life of this place. It is a necrohol overrun with beasts. We tread here on a fool’s errand. We had best turn back.”

Daina’s faculties had returned to her, the hi-potion no longer coursing through her system like alcohol. She picked up the object the baknamy had maliciously thrown at her. It was a leather-bound book. Its spine was so decayed that it fell apart in her hands. Most of the pages, moldy and water-damaged, were illegible. A few toward the middle were still intact, however.

She began to read, her voice hushed in the Mist. “ ‘It was a clement day when my partner and I arrived at Nabudis at the end of a long journey. I remember looking upon her beautiful, welcoming streets and realizing no other place could be more fitting a destination. Gathering up what coin we had, we secured residence, and began to look for work. From odd jobs to risky border patrols, we did all, and were satisfied. Thinking on it now, I realize, I was happy then.’ ”

It was a journal, scribed in a bold, masculine hand. Why would the baknamy keep such a thing? They could not possibly get money for it. She doubted they were even literate. Frowning, Daina read on: “ ‘We were not particular in our acceptance of work, and so in a short time amassed enough wealth that we might live in some degree of comfort. Our residence began to fill with the articles and artifacts of our daily lives, and soon we found our roots sunk so deep in the soil of this city, we could not imagine ever leaving. Though I assisted my partner with work, we gradually came to seek out our own time, and so grew apart. Yet, we were satisfied. Why need this life ever end?

“ ‘Several years after beginning our life in Nabudis, there came a call for soldiers from the city watch. We had, by this time, made something of a name for ourselves, and so did a summons come to us. We were not born in this city of Nabudis, yet our love for the town knew nothing of this, and we accepted without delay. I was given to the border patrol, my partner to the defense of the city wall. The night before I was to leave, we ate a splendid meal and drank such wine as we could afford. It was as though we knew it would be our last meal together.’ ”

Daina stopped. A conjecture of where this was headed made her unequal to reading further.

“Is that it?” Vaan asked. He came forward and gingerly tugged the journal pieces out of her hands. He saw there was more, but when he looked curiously at Daina, she turned away, letting her hair fan across her face.

Vaan picked up the narrative: “ ‘The days of my patrol were harsh, yet we finished our duties, and weeks later, had only to return. That night, I dreamt. My partner came to me, trying to tell me something, yet I could hear nothing but the blowing of a distant wind. Perhaps I became homesick as I slept, for when I awoke, my eyes were wet with tears.’ ” Vaan paused, his nose screwed up, but then he tenaciously read on. “ ‘In the dream, my partner had been unchanged, a perfect memory. Our feet turned home, all our thoughts flying down the road ahead of us, faster than we might hope to walk, back toward Nabudis.

“ ‘What awaited us upon our return was not a hero’s welcome, but despair. Gone were the beautiful palisades, gone were the families and friends that surely awaited us. Only a wasted, blasted land remained.’ ”

Vaan swallowed, his face going gray. “ ‘Then we saw the people of Nabudis, though to call them that is a jape of the bitt’rest sort. They were the walking dead, hungering for life, and consuming all they found that was light and good. We fought them to save our own lives, and we wept. Then, among the dead, I saw him. And I could fight no more.’ ”

Vaan looked up. “That’s all there is.”

By this time, Daina was weeping with such agony that she was aware of nothing except the way her heart was tearing itself apart and the hot tears that soaked her face. Her father – her mother! Their fates were clearer to her than ever before. Helpless, voiceless sobs wracked her body, and she buried her face in her knees. She rocked back and forth, keening.

“Daina?” Vaan crouched by her side, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

“Let her be,” Basch said quietly. “Such grief, shocking though it is, must be allowed to run its course.”

“. . . Yeah.” After a slight hesitation, Vaan stood.

There was such understanding in their voices. Daina made an effort to control herself, hiccupping. Calmer, she dried her eyes and regained her feet. She took the journal back from Vaan, closed its broken cover over the loose pages, and placed it with her other supplies. Their failures mocked them with reproofs: Lord Rasler. Reks. The unknown writer of the journal. Basch’s twin brother.

“You know, nothing can bring them back,” Vaan said dully. He wasn’t talking about the people of Nabudis.

Daina glanced at Basch. If he had been irritated with her before, he showed no sign of it now.

“We’re still here,” she said to Vaan, and then sniffled. It would be a long time before the tears weren’t lurking just behind her control. “As long as we remember them, they’ll never truly be gone.”

“Yeah.” Vaan brightened marginally. “You’re right.”

Ashe, somberly listening to them until then, drifted toward the palace like a soul headed for the gates of the abyss. Fran cut her off, putting her hands on her hips.

“Is it revenge that you desire?” the viera asked. “Yes or no, not this way lies the capital. The road to Archades leads east of Salikawood, beyond the Phon Coast and Tchita Uplands.”

The viera and the hume princess frowned at each other in challenge. Fran did not back down, her face as impassive as Jote’s.

Ashe spun on her heel and marched away, her mouth set in unhappy lines. They returned to the Salikawood to find a path that would reunite them with Penelo and Balthier.

* * *

Daina smelled the sea before she saw it.

In spite of the disrepair into which the tree-roads had fallen, or where they had fallen away altogether, they arrived at the gate that led between two cliffs into Archadia proper nearly the same time as the caravan. The reunion between Vaan and Penelo was more noisy than tender, but the rest of the caravaners smiled indulgently at each other.

When the craftsmoogles finished repairing the gate, Daina and her friends got to watch the massive gears roll the halves out of the way. A sea breeze blew through the fissure, laden with salt and sun. The merchants, who had schedules to keep, cheered. There was no Mist on Phon Coast. Tall palm trees connected the sparkling white sand and long green grass with the endless, cloud-wisped blue sky.

Several Imperial patrol ships zoomed by, marring the tranquil scene.

“It would seem we made the right choice,” Balthier quietly observed to Ashe and Daina. “If we’d taken the easy way and come by airship, one of those patrols would no doubt have been quick to roll out the red carpet. We’re on the Empire’s doorstep now, so we shouldn’t have to worry quite so much, but that’s no excuse to get sloppy. It is still a long road to the capital.”

Vaan, who had not heard this, shouted, “Race you to the water!”

Daina giggled at Balthier’s expression when Vaan and Penelo dashed for the demarcation between waves and sand and began roughhousing in the surf. Vaan laughingly splashed Penelo. She squealed, dancing away from him. The slow-moving caravan did not stop. Ashe and Balthier kept pace with it, but Daina impulsively ran after her friends.

Vaan pushed Penelo over. She landed on her backside in the clear, blue-green water.

“Hey!” she yelled, kicking at him.

“You Dalmascans.” Daina grinned. “You don’t know anything. Let me show you how it’s done.”

With that, she chopped her hand at the water, neither scooping nor slapping, a trick she had learned in her childhood. She sent a huge wave at Vaan that smacked him right in the face. Penelo burst out laughing while he spluttered and coughed, shaking his wet blond hair. The three of them proceeded to engage in a water fight that drenched them in minutes. It was absolutely wonderful. Away from the Mist and the terrible vision of Nabudis, Daina let the saltwater disguise her tears. Giggling, she shielded her face when Vaan and Penelo united against her, sending buckets of water cascading over her head. She tried to run, calling her surrender. Penelo tackled her. All three of them went under, thrashing in the water and sand. They came up howling with laughter.

Wading soggily out of the surf, Daina tried to unclog her ear. She caught Basch’s eye. He and Fran stood together, watching them play. The angle of the sun threw shadows across their faces, but Daina suspected he was laughing. Embarrassed, she turned her back, digging wet locks of her hair out of her collar. Was she a knight, or a little girl?

Tired out from their brief war, the others trudged onto the shore. Their clothes, like Daina’s, had already begun to dry in the sun. They took up their posts with the caravan, marching into the sunset, each one lost in his or her own thoughts.

* * *

“He said that to you?” Daina shifted the box of wares to her other hip and stared at her lady. They were helping one of the merchants unload, having reached the hunter’s camp safely early that morning. After a few hours’ rest, they’d reported for duty.

Ashe nodded. She spoke to her own box. “He’s worried about me. He told me of his father, an akademician named Cidolfus Demen Bunansa who works in the Draklor Laboratories, and how he ran away from home and his duties because his father was utterly consumed by his fascination with nethicite.”

“So Balthier was a judge,” Daina said thoughtfully. Balthier was such a carefree sky pirate. She couldn’t picture him in one of those suits of judicer’s plate, but it made sense. His accent, his bearing, his expensive clothes, all the marks of an Archadian noble. And the elites were judges and judge magisters. Archadia was truly an empire of wealth and brutality.

The two women reached one of the shanties. Ashe handed her box to the green bangaa manning the station. “ ‘The choice is yours to make. But don’t give your heart to a stone. You’re too strong for that, Princess.’ Those were his words to me.”

Ashe’s shoulders slumped, her face settling into its familiar, unhappy lines. She twisted her silver wedding ring on her finger. “I am torn. I do not know what to do. The past is never far, and it blocks the future from me.”

A heavy tread on the wooden steps reminded them of the bangaa merchant. They paused, resuming their conversation only once the bangaa had gone back inside with Daina’s box.

“My lady, why do you lead us to the capital?”

“The nethicite,” Ashe said at once. She sighed as if she had already told herself this many times over, to convince herself it was the right thing to do. “I must destroy it.”

“Then that is what we will do.”

Ashe’s gray eyes studied her face, and Daina smiled as she said, “Listening to the advice of a former judge isn’t the worst thing we can do, my lady.”

“Did you hear?” Vaan asked, trotting up to them, a pair of boxes perched precariously in his arms. “If we can defeat the monster in the Sochen Cave Palace, Clan Centurio will let us join the Hunt Club.”

“The Hunt Club?” Ashe tried unsuccessfully to hide her smile. “You have time for such pursuits, do you?”

“Yeah!” Vaan’s eyes were big and excited. “This camp’s full of headhunters –”


	8. Interlude, part seven

“All right, there’s been some confusion on this point, so I want to get it straight right now, for the record,” the bangaa merchant interrupted, putting his clawed hands on his hips, making all three of them jump. His sensitive, two-part ears twitched and set his hoop earrings chiming. “ ‘Headhunters’ are fellows who capture criminals for bounty. ‘Hunters’ are them what hunt marks – them being creatures and the like – for rewards.” He paused, inserting a finger under his blindfold and scratching thoughtfully. “Now, there was talk once of this headhunter, a bangaa, and a cruel, evil fellow who’d do anything for a little coin. They said he was working in secret for one of them judges up in Archades! Justice . . . heh. I haven’t heard much talk of him lately, but headhunters that mean don’t die easy. He’s probably laying low somewhere, most like.”

The bangaa finally relieved Vaan of his teetering burden, and Vaan opened his mouth. Daina whacked him in the arm, shaking her head. She well remembered the battle in Lhusu Mines and its uncertain conclusion. It sounded as though she’d just learned who Ba’Gamnan really was, and why he was after their friend. The last thing they needed right then was for the truth to spread, and Vaan closed his mouth again. The three teenagers returned to the wagons for more cargo, where, later, Daina discovered that Vaan fully intended to join the Hunt Club.

“It’ll be okay,” he insisted. “I’ll go and hunt the mark in Sochen, and then come back for you when it’s safe. Balthier says the cave palace is how we’ll sneak into Archades, so we have to clear it out, anyway.”

The hunter’s camp was noisy that evening. The afternoon’s torrential rain had sent everyone indoors until the clouds dispersed near nightfall. The cooking fires bloomed like bright orange flowers against the damp sand, offering minimal heat. Daina drew her coat closer, crossing her arms over her middle. She glanced at the women’s tent, where Ashe, who had contracted a cold, was resting. She wondered if she could procure some hot broth for her lady, whose appetite had faded with the day.

“Balthier will accompany you?” Basch asked.

“And Penelo and Fran. They’re waiting. Balthier says we can reach the Tchita Uplands tonight.”

Basch considered this and then said, “All right. I will explain to Her Majesty.”

“Thanks, Basch!” Vaan yelled. He turned and ran off.

Daina giggled, but then she sobered. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Aye. We will not be delayed by the effort.” He looked at her. “It will be a few days before Lady Ashe is well enough to travel.”

“True.” Daina cast one last look at the tent and then began walking toward the vendor of goods, the obnoxious hume woman who spoke as much with her hands as her mouth. She gave the same lecture to Daina about the need for remedies, vaccines, and smelling salts, which “any good hunter would take into the field,” every time Daina tried to speak with her about her order. Daina listened patiently, and then made her inquiry.

“Yes, yes,” the vendor said, leaping off her platform. She grabbed Daina’s arm to lead her, saying, “Right this way. You’ll want to see his progress, yes. And you!” She whipped around to confront Basch. “This way, the armor smith wanted to speak to you, something about the damascus – or was it the adamantine? Go on, he’s right over there, dear,” she finished at Daina, waving her off at the same time she shooed Basch in the opposite direction.

Daina grinned. Basch, always so courteous, looked as if he didn’t quite know how to deal with a woman like the vendor.

He was a big boy. He’d figure it out. Cheerfully, Daina sought out the weapon smith on her own. He seemed pleased to see her. He emerged from his hut, wiping his blackened hands on his apron before he offered her one to shake, and then he bowed her inside. The iga blade, which she had commissioned to replace the ashura, was a marvelous piece of work, even incomplete. Its handle fit perfectly in her hand, its length the proper distance from her wrist to her elbow. Ashe’s new platinum sword wasn’t close to completion, however; Daina handed over the measurements he’d requested, thanked him for his hard work, and then left to try her luck on one of the cooks.

As she expected, Ashe lay on her cot in an attitude of languor, her breathing labored, her skin flushed with fever. Daina tried to make her comfortable. She offered the broth, piled her with blankets, and secured the tent’s flaps to reduce the light.

Perhaps the absence of Penelo and Fran was a good thing, Daina reflected, wandering alone down to the water. It gave her lady the chance to sleep in peace. As for herself, Daina wasn’t tired yet. It had been a slow week here in the hunter’s camp while everyone restocked and had their equipment upgraded, and then with Ashe falling ill. Daina trudged over a dune, the grass licking at her ankles like nidhogg’s tongues. She half slid down the other side until she could no longer see the camp.

She settled in the sand, hugging her knees, and watched the black water surge and recede. Above her, the clouds drifted on the night wind, sometimes allowing the moon to peek through. Its light pierced the waves, turning them a phosphorescent green. She observed some black and white piranhas swimming languidly above the waves, their outthrust lower jaws crammed with wicked fangs. Since none of the large, flying fish offered to come to shore to feed, she watched them complacently. With the salty breeze ruffling her hair and the sound of the surf in her ears, Daina relaxed. Her mind wandered.

As always, she thought of the last two years. Sixteen had been too young to lose her parents, but she had found a friend in Ashe. She thought of everything she and Ashe had gone through, and of the new friends they’d picked up along the way. Vaan. Penelo. Balthier. Fran. Basch.

Basch. Daina blushed and buried her face in her knees. It was so stupid, but – sitting there alone – where no one could see her or hear her in such a romantic setting – she began to sing. Love songs, silly and serious both. She poured her whole heart and soul into the melodies, imagining him sitting beside her.

“May I join you?”

Face burning hotter than ever, Daina leaped to her feet.

Regret crossed Basch’s face, and he lifted a hand as if to soothe a skittish chocobo. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” she blurted, and then winced. Stupid! Why in Ivalice would she court such a blatant lie? “I mean, it’s fine. I just didn’t hear you approach.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt you,” he said in his low, rough voice, and Daina shivered. Fortunately, he was settling himself cross-legged in the sand and didn’t notice. “Your songs are beautiful.”

Daina hesitated, but then she boldly sat next to him. Together, they stared across the sea. However, she couldn’t bring herself to sing anymore, and instead said, “Vaan’s greatest ambition is to become a sky pirate. He wants to make a name for himself.”

“I’d say he’s well on his way,” Basch said drily. “If he starts hunting rare marks, he’ll get his name in the clan annals.”

Daina smiled at her hands, lax in her lap. “He’ll do it, too. I think getting out of Rabanastre was the best thing he could have done.”

There they sat, alone together, talking about Vaan. Next to her, Basch shifted. Their shoulders touched. He was warm, like sunlight. She bowed her head, hiding behind her hair. Gooseflesh erupted on her arms, but she made no effort to put more space between them.

Neither did he.

* * *

Her heart leaped. In the last few days, she’d felt the imaginary ravine between them dwindling, but she hadn’t allowed herself to hope that Basch might have come to care for her. Certainly, this was the first time since that disastrous night in the Zertinan Caverns that they’d been alone together.

“Lady,” he said, and then hesitated.

She looked up, and promptly forgot all about Vaan. She was trapped in amber, unable to move. Those intense eyes darkened, and, slowly, he bent his golden head and put his lips to hers.

It was a gentle kiss this time, chaste and so unbearably sweet she thought she was going to drown in it. An unrepentant curl of his hair lay over her closed eyes. His fingers brushed her cheek, over and over, lightly, as if he thought she would break. She trembled, wanting more. The night was theirs.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He froze and then sat back, his face as alarmed as that of a man waking from a nightmare. “No.”

No.

_No._

The power that one little word held astounded Daina. Power. To deny. To destroy. She caught her breath on a sob, clenched her jaw, and waited for the emotion to pass. She loved him, and the words could never be unsaid. Nor did she wish to take them back.

“I’m too old for you,” he said with an edge of desperation, watching her struggle.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said through her teeth.

“What is there for two such as us?” He gathered his legs under him and stood. “Do not waste yourself on me –”

“Because when I am thirty-six, you’ll be over fifty?” she challenged. “I’ve already considered that. Don’t think me a fool.”

He frowned, but she had started and couldn’t stop. Everything she’d wanted to say to him came flooding out of her, her temper keeping the tears at bay.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “You tell me that our ages are too dissimilar, but when have our ages ever prevented us from talking like rational adults? When has the difference interfered with our duties, with our ability to fight, with our judgment, with our counsel for Her Majesty? What is it that you’re looking for? Do you see a child when you look at me?”

She stopped. She could read it in his face as clear as if he’d shouted it at her: No, he did not see a child.

Suddenly, she realized how she must have looked to him after the solitude of the oubliette – salvation appearing in the form of a young woman in a Dalmascan uniform. Balthier and Vaan may have been the first non-Imperial humes he’d seen in two years, but she and Fran were definitely the first women. Any heterosexual man would have been struck in such a circumstance.

In spite of herself, despite the answer she expected and was receiving, she blushed. “Don’t you want to live, Basch?” she asked. “Don’t you want to love someone, to be with her as you grow older? Don’t you want – a . . .” She floundered, aghast at her own audacity, but her pride spurred her forward. “What about a family of your own? Or do you expect to die for Ashe before this is over and finish what Vayne started two years ago?”

“You have your life to live,” he said, his expression severe. She’d made him mad. “I will live mine as I see fit. Forgive my intrusion. I meant no offense to you.”

In disbelief, Daina jumped to her feet. His mouth – that mouth! – met her eyes, and then she yanked her gaze upward.

_“Offense?”_ she shrieked. If Basch was genuinely angry, good. She wanted to make him _feel._ Even if she couldn’t make him love her, if she could get him to feel anything it would help ease the pain. He was a knight, courteous to the very core of his being. She attacked him there. “So that is how you see me – just a wench to dump your frustrated affections on because nothing preferable has presented itself. I should have expected this, but I assumed a knight above such behavior. In which case, I have no one to blame but myself because you certainly can’t be held responsible for a man’s needs. I thank you for the lesson.”

The color left his face, but he wasn’t only appalled – he was furious. “Lady –”

“Leave me alone!” she shouted. “Don’t come any closer to me than that. In fact, it would be best if you didn’t come near me at all.”

They glared at each other across five feet of sand.

“As you wish.” With military precision, he executed a slight bow and then walked away, whatever he’d been about to say, lost.

Daina wasn’t surprised when she woke the next morning with a sore throat and an aching head. With a groan, she rolled over but was too shaky and weak from fever to sit up.

She didn’t see Basch for the four days it took the fever to run its course, for she had neither the strength nor the inclination to leave the tent. This left her time to think and to regret her abyssal temper.

Words were dangerous things. Hurtful. Misleading.

_Leave me alone!_

She had no doubt that Basch would do just that because she’d done her damnedest to insult him in every way imaginable.

_I love you._

The truth, unshakable, undeniable, and utterly impossible to do away with.

_As you wish._

But she didn’t. She didn’t wish that. Shivering, Daina ducked her head under her blankets. She was forming a new strategy. If words were not to be trusted, then actions would have to do. The way he touched her, like holding a piece of spun sugar, gave her the impression that he viewed her as something delicate and fragile. Perhaps other women he’d known had been thus. Daina was not. She was strong and independent; she did not need a man to protect her. What she wanted was a companion to stand with her.

If only there were a way to make him understand.

* * *

On the morning of the fifth day, their friends returned from their successful hunt. Daina and Ashe, recovered, went out to meet them. Vaan’s triumphant grin rivaled the dawn for brilliance.

While Vaan went to report the slaying of the mandragoras that had been holed up in Sochen to the huntmaster, Daina debated asking Balthier about Ba’Gamnan. Since they hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of the headhunter after Bhujerba, she decided to leave well enough alone. Besides, the sky pirate seemed distracted and cross. She didn’t want to exacerbate his bad mood.

They hired chocobos to carry them as swiftly as possible through the northern stretch of Phon Coast and the Tchita Uplands, although they had to set the birds loose at the entrance to the Sochen Cave Palace. Penelo combed her fingers through her chocobo’s breast feathers while Vaan tied its reins to the saddle, out of the way of grasping shrubs and the bird’s own legs.

“Will they be all right?” Penelo asked.

“They will be fine,” Ashe assured her. She gave her chocobo one last pat before she turned its head for the hunter’s camp. “They’ll find their way home. _Hyah!”_

She slapped its rump. With a kweh, the chocobo broke into an eager run. The others, kwehing in chorus, followed, to be picked up by any hunter in possession of a peck of gysahl greens with which to tempt them.

Ashe turned and eyed the cave mouth, narrow and tall, its depth lost in the gloom of the underground. “Now it’s time for us to find our own way.”

Vaan confidently led the way into the cave. He descended the loamy slope to a broad, natural cavern bristling with stalagmites and stalactites and a few zombie knights. Fran, who wore a bangle around her wrist that allowed her to see the unseen, warned them of long-standing magickal traps. They moved slowly and carefully along the right-hand wall. Bioluminescent moss of green and blue interrupted the cavern’s darkness. Using its soft light, Vaan navigated them to an opulent set of stone doors set directly into the cave wall. Beyond the doors, an empty cavern about the dimensions of a ballroom with cracked, dirty tiles on the floor and pillars by the walls greeted them with silence.

“Hey,” he said as if this thought had just occurred to him, “you sure this rabbit hole’s really the way into Archades?”

Like the Stilshrine of Miriam, Sochen had been built during the Galtean Alliance. Unlike the stilshrine, there were no kiltias here to impress their asceticism upon the crumbling ruin. The historian that Basch had spoken with in the camp had told them that ancient monks had used the palace as a spiritual training ground. Legend went that the corruption they washed from their souls pooled here. Unholy ghosts apparently rose from the blackened soil to attack those of pure heart who dared trespass. Balthier had scoffed at this superstition.

“Better a hare unseen than a rat in a trap.” He put his hands on his narrow hips and cocked his head. “Then again, if you’d prefer to go knocking on the front gates of the city, be my guest.”

“But what about once we’re inside?” Penelo asked. “Won’t the city watch find us?”

Ashe crossed her arms over her middle. “We’ll do what we can to blend into the crowd. Our names may be notorious, but our faces are not far known.”

“True, true,” Vaan said thoughtfully. “You’re our princess, and we didn’t even recognize you.”

Ashe’s arms dropped, and she sighed. “I noticed.”

Everyone walked at his or her own pace. Aside from the empty ballroom and two or three passages in remarkably good repair, most of the palace seemed nothing more than an underground cave network. Phosphorescent moss plastered the walls and beasts infested the tunnels. The imps and pit fiends acted like giant mosquitos, hovering just out of swatting range with their spears held at the ready. Larger arcane monstrosities zealously guarded any door still fitted to a frame: Strikers, which were once men, poisoned, their heads removed, sporting heavily-magicked necklaces that kept their wills enslaved. And wendigoes, the reanimated corpses of the drowned, their heads replaced with swirling ice elementals. Talk fell to a minimum as the party battered their way forward.

Daina treated it all like a cathartic training exercise. She slashed at the imps’ vestigial wings and parried the pit fiends’ spears. She hacked and thrust at the rolling gorgimeras before they could shake out their heads and wings like bizarre children’s toys. She got soaked by a mineral-laden waterfall when a flying focalor fish snapped its jaws shut inches from her knee, and she leapt sideways to avoid an amputation. The water smelled bad, old and musty like wet rock.

Although those who fought at her side changed as the landscape sloped upward and the tunnels narrowed, while it was sometimes Vaan and Penelo aiding her, and sometimes Ashe, Balthier, or Fran, Basch never came near. She gritted her teeth against her own stupidity but was wise enough to admit to herself that it was probably for the best that he stayed away.

* * *

Ashe and Daina led the way into another of the ballroom-sized caverns. Some of the glaze on the tiles had survived in here, revealing wall mosaics of deep blue and violet, though the floor had not. Mud, black as soot, clumpy and stinking of slime, stretched from wall to wall. Wetness oozed out of it with every step.

So did a slender figure, armored in tarnished filigree. It moved like soap bubbles on the soundless breath of a child, so Ashe and Daina walked right by it before Penelo shouted a warning. The ghost was vaguely hume-shaped, though its hands dripped from metal sleeves like smoky tendrils. It seemed to float on a legless column of smoke. Its tall, tapered, box of a head sat atop its shoulders, circled with a metal halo. A single, stylized maser eye burned on its chest plate.

Vaan and Basch charged forward, swinging at the ahriman ghost. Their swords passed through it as it warped to safety, buffeted by the disturbed air. It rose several feet higher, out of their reach. Balthier tried to shoot it. Inconceivably, he missed, and Ashe gasped. Balthier never missed.

The ahriman warped closer, brushing one of its hand-tendrils over Balthier’s head. The spell seemed to grip him in invisible straps, immobilizing him where he stood. Basch, undaunted, attacked again, trying to keep himself between the ghost and Lady Ashe. Though his sword scraped off the ghost’s armor, proving it could at least be touched, it languidly stroked his head, immobilizing him as well. The eerie silence with which it did this sent gooseflesh across Daina’s arms.

Fran tried to release their comrades with a spell, but the ahriman split into four perfect replicas. Warping faster than she could cast, the second one got to Vaan. The third held out its tattered hands and cast a blizzara spell over Fran’s head. Her magick shell flared green, saving her by deflecting the worst of the ice, but she could not finish her esuna spell. Each time she tried, more blizzara spells exploded against her shielding shell and forced her back.

With an angry yell, Ashe attacked. Her sword rang off an ahriman’s armor, beating it back. She swung again and sliced straight through it. The replica shuddered and vanished. Ashe, surprised, almost didn’t get out of the way as two more bore down on her, their smoky hand-things fluttering like sheets on a line. Fran’s white magick swooped toward Balthier, but the ghosts divided again, deflecting the spell. They surrounded the women.

“Which one is the real one?” Ashe cried. She stabbed another through its chest plate eye. It vanished, but two more took its place. “There will be no end to this if we cannot cut it off at the source!”

While Ashe and Daina swung their swords in a sort of frenzy to keep the ahriman and its replicas from getting too close, Penelo moved with a grace known only to a street dancer. She twisted and pirouetted out of the way of more blizzara magick, more immobilize spells, and angry swipes of their non-hands. Fran tried, again, to cast esuna, and an ahriman from the far side of the swarm immediately warped at her, flinging ice as it came. Penelo slashed at it with her dagger. Instantly, the entire swarm converged on her.

“Penelo, run!” Daina shouted. “Keep moving! The clones are hiding the real one. Ashe, Fran, each of you pick one, get it alone, and take it down!”

Penelo darted into the gloom, and sure enough, the ahrimans ghosted weirdly after her. Daina slashed through two of them when their backs were turned. The pack broke apart. More blizzara magick chilled the cavern to the point that she could see her breath. She kept circling the room, slipping in the sticky mud and thin ice. Occasionally, she passed one of her friends going in the opposite direction, pursued by the slightly transparent ghosts, but her strategy seemed to be working. The real ahriman, confused, stopped dividing. It dove for Ashe, a beam firing from its maser eye. Ashe blocked the beam with her shield, but the creature kept coming. It raised its fluttering, smoky hand.

Penelo released a thundaga spell that caused the ghost and its replicas to shudder. Fran shot lightning arrows that sparked and fizzed in bright white. The replicas vanished one by one. The real ahriman ghosted backward, its arms windmilling. The maser eye fired again.

Daina, who had crept up behind the malicious ghost, sliced the ahriman in half. It shook itself like a wet dog, slumped, and then vanished. So did all the remaining clones. Instantly, the room warmed.

The four women converged in the center, breathing hard and splattered with mud.

“We – did – it,” Penelo gasped, clutching a stitch in her side. “That was awful. I couldn’t hear it coming!”

“Is everyone all right?” Ashe asked.

She and Penelo looked toward the door at the same time. Vaan’s eyes were wide with frozen panic. Balthier looked highly affronted. Daina couldn’t see Basch, but she knew he was there, as helpless as the others.

“I suppose we should free them,” she said offhandedly.

Fran smirked. “It seems they are not necessary to our survival,” she said. “We could leave them here if we wish.”

Daina and Penelo giggled, but Ashe sighed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, trudging back through the mud.

“You have to admit, they’re more trouble than they’re worth,” Penelo mischievously said, trotting along after her, slipping a little on the wet.

“I admit no such thing,” Ashe retorted. Humor was truly not her strong point. “Fran, release them.”

“Of course.” The viera began her spell, the green magick circle beneath her feet half hidden in the mud. Daina wondered if the others were holding their breaths, too, waiting for another ghost to interrupt. The shadows stayed put, and Balthier was free.

The sky pirate, who could be rather haughty himself, said nothing upon his release. He marched away, squelching through the mud. Vaan was not so forgiving (“More trouble than we’re worth? I should leave you behind and see how you like it.”). Basch took his rescue with quiet grace, thanking Fran for her assistance.

But it was Daina he looked at as he said it, his expression unreadable, and he did not look away.

* * *

When they reached a dead end, Daina tilted her face upward. She could feel a breeze swirling down, but it wasn’t exactly fresh. To her right, Balthier wiped the dust off a disused pedestal and then pushed something in its top. A platform descended from above, the underside of which was set with cloudstone. It came to a graceful halt on the ground. Ashe led the way onto the lift, which was big enough to hold all seven of them. Once they were on board, the platform rose on its own as lightly as a butterfly.

On the top floor, they passed through a corridor and another opulent door, and then –

“Smells less like a capital, and more like a sewer,” Vaan said.

“Even empires have need of sewers,” Balthier said. He smirked, but his tone was too mordant. “The runoff from Archades proper pools here: those who lack papers to live in the city itself. The mighty who have fallen, and the fallen who would be mighty. Their eyes never leave Archades.”

Vaan looked puzzled. “I guess it must be a lot nicer than this place,” he said, and Daina understood. Everything in the slum was rundown, forgotten, and abandoned, even the grimy people dotted here and there like drab wildflowers. Weeds pushed up between the cobbles, and most walls stood independent of any kind of roof.

“Oh, to be sure.” Balthier shrugged without apology. “Archades reeks of a different filth. Let’s be off! We can follow our noses to Draklor.”

All Daina’s nose could detect was the vaguely metallic odor emanating from her damp and muddy coat. She and Basch edged closer to Lady Ashe, shielding the princess from the worst of the poverty and the hungry, wary eyes of the denizens in Old Archades, one knight to either side. They would be out of these narrow alleys soon enough, and on their way to the Dusk Shard, Daina soothed herself. They wouldn’t have to put up with this depressing place for long.

So she thought. However, none of them had counted on the Imperial soldiers guarding the stairway that led into the city, and who would not let them pass without papers.

Stymied, they looked at one another.

“What now?” Vaan wondered.

* * *

“Well, well, well. There’s a sight for sore eyes.”

Startled, Daina turned around. A tall, dark-haired hume swaggered by her, his gaze fixed on Balthier. Bewildered, she stared at the newcomer. His drawl, his half-lidded eyes, his broad smirk topped by the thinnest of greasy mustaches – if it weren’t for his ragged, not-too-fresh, mismatched apparel, she’d have pegged him for a politician.

“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again. Not here,” the long-faced hume added.

After a flicker of dislike, there and then just as quickly gone, Balthier rolled his eyes heavenward. “Oh, wonderful. Enter the streetear.”

“A pirate would do well to smile. Wouldn’t want to sour his reputation,” the other man drawled, chuckling. He still had not acknowledged Daina or the others.

“You know this guy?” Vaan butted in.

“An old . . . friend,” Balthier said with a slight hesitation. “He’s a streetear – a peddler of rumor and hearsay – by the name of Jules. He’d bite a gil given him by his own mother and shave it by half to pay for her funeral.”

Jules grinned. “Sometimes an ear with tight purse string’s the order of the day,” he said, not denying the charge. His drooping eyes widened innocently. “Like when a pirate decides he fancies going _up_ in the world.”

“To the city?” Vaan perked up at once. “You know a way?”

“In Archades,” Jules said to the air above Vaan’s head, holding up a finger like a professor in a lecture hall, “knowledge is power. And power has a way of opening doors, boy. Now, a fool will buy a sack of feathers for his pillow, but a wise man, he’ll buy the whole stinking cockatrice and get his fill of meat into the bargain. So, wise man, how does 1500g sound?”

Many of them might have protested, Balthier and Daina included, but Vaan, always impatient, cleaned out his wallet and paid the streetear. With a ridiculously deep bow, Jules then disappeared into the crowd. Vaan’s jaw dropped.

“Wait!” He pelted after Jules.

Balthier sighed.

They never did catch up to the streetear directly, but Daina caught glimpses of him talking to the Old Archadians, whispering in their ears, his face as smug as a basilisk’s. Not long after, a fight broke out among the degenerates. The resulting noise brought the two guards running – leaving the stairway clear.

Like a magician from behind a puff of smoke, Jules reappeared. He held out his hands to collect their praise, which was not forthcoming from anyone but Vaan.

“Was starting trouble really necessary?” Daina asked Jules in a low voice.

He smiled at her, as sleepy and secretive as a basilisk in the shade.

“Now’s our chance!” Vaan cried, not hearing her. “Thanks, Jules.” He waved and ran. Penelo, Ashe, and Basch followed him.

Balthier, however, made his graceful way to the streetear’s side, who watched the ensuing arrests with amusement. “Never thought you’d go for such a meager price,” he observed.

“A pirate should know that words are worth gil uncountable,” Jules calmly returned. “Here’s some words for you: The prodigal Bunansa son’s come back to the Imperial roost.”

Balthier’s expression darkened, but Jules’s gleamed.

“See?” he drawled. “Words of much value, these.”

Balthier threw up his hands in exasperation and followed Vaan, Fran and Daina in his wake.

* * *

Where Nabudis had been lush and green, and Rabanastre was as white as a pearl on a bed of sand, the Imperial City of Archades was red.

Skyscrapers, Balthier called them. An apt name for the high buildings of russet brick straining for the clouds, raking their tops against the very sky. Personal hovercraft and public cabs swooped among the spires like doves on the wing, the traffic in the air rivaling the pedestrian traffic on the ground. The nobles of Archades were beautiful and elegant, the men in form-fitting suits of many layers, the women in long, flowing skirts and armbands of gold, platinum, and tortoiseshell. Parasols protected some ladies from the sun, and no one but the streetears moved quicker than a stroll.

Penelo gave Vaan’s kidneys a poke. “You’re gaping like a fish out of water.”

“I’m just checking out the city,” he said. He leaned over a barricade, the better to see the levels below them. Then, he shrugged at her. “Even if it is the Empire.”

“You’ve changed, Vaan.” Penelo shook back one of her braids. “You were always marching to your own beat. Impatient, even. In a good way.”

“Maybe it’s because I’ve seen more now. Never imagined I’d ever come this far away from home.” Vaan hopped down, brightening. “Hey, Larsa’s here in the city, isn’t he? He’s a tough one. I wonder how he’s doing.”

“You always were a soft touch, Vaan,” Penelo said. Her sweet smile flashed. “You know what’s amazing? I thought I’d go my whole life without meeting people like the princess, or Lord Larsa. And here we are in the capital!”

“I know! It’s a little over my head sometimes, though I wouldn’t want much part of it.”

“Good, Vaan.” Basch clapped the boy on the shoulder. “You’ve come to understand the hardships of royalty.”

“Hey, I’m just along for the ride.”

Penelo ducked under the knight’s elbow. “That wasn’t a complaint was it, Basch?” she asked mischievously.

Basch made an embarrassed noise and propped his hands on his hips. “Right. Let’s get moving.”

“Hey, don’t change the subject!”

“Right,” he said again. He laughed when Penelo did.

Daina bit her lip on a smile. Ashe watched this exchange, her face alight. The two women shared hopeful smiles. They would have moved on, but Balthier heaved a sigh and squared his shoulders.

“We go our separate ways here, Vaan,” he said, interrupting the banter. “I’ve some business to attend to. We’ll meet again later.”

With a quick step, he walked away. The crowds swallowed him whole.

“Huh? Hey –” Vaan stared forlornly after him.

Daina, who had assessed Fran’s lack of reaction, touched his arm. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s find our way to Draklor.”

It wasn’t easy finding their way anywhere. Archades had risen out of its original municipal layout so that many places simply could not be reached by foot – including, they found, the imposing edifice of Draklor, which started sixty stories off the ground. Through some backtracking, they managed to move from the Trant district into Molberry. There, they discovered a taxi station. The oblong, rounded cabs swooped to the curb, paused to let passengers debark and embark, and then glissaded away again in a never-ending stream.

Vaan hailed one.

The cabbie gave him a once over that took in his dusty clothes, his obvious adventurer’s mien, and said, “Only those with nine or more chops may ride this cab, boy. Nothing personal, I assure you.”

“A chop?” Vaan repeated, baffled. “What’s that?”

“If you lack a chop, you pay coin,” the cabbie said, making a show of relenting. “That’s 1000000g, thank you.”

“What?” Penelo exclaimed. “That’s crazy!”

They argued with the cabbie, who threatened to call the guard if they didn’t desist and make way for paying customers. Naturally, they were starting to garner a lot of attention. Daina tried to convince Vaan to leave off before someone actually did recognize one of them, but he was having none of it.

From behind, a new disturbance grew. The thick crowds parted as though fearful of contamination. One by one, the gawkers vanished, hurrying on their way to somewhere, anywhere, else. The streetear Jules moved through them, just as ragged as ever. Daina stood protectively in front of her lady. Jules, however, had eyes only for Vaan.

“Having a spot of trouble, are we?” he asked. “I’ve a message from Master Balthier. He’s waiting in Central. He says to come quickly.”

“On this?” Perplexed, Vaan gestured at the cab. He took a hasty step aside to avoid getting flattened by a formidable lady towing what looked like a pile of packages with legs. “But we need a . . . a chop. What is a chop, anyway?”

Jules grinned. “When a boy wants information,” he said, waggling his fingers, “that’s right, a boy pays. 2500g sounds about right.”

* * *

Two and a half thousand gil was a lot less than a million, but it still didn’t feel right. “Should we let him do this?” Daina asked Ashe in a low voice.

“We have little other choice,” Ashe answered. She sighed, her brows creased in worry.

Daina silently appealed to Basch, but he shook his head. Ashe was right. They were strangers in a strange land, as the saying went.

Vaan’s last gil clinked in Jules’s palm.

“Why, any upstanding citizen of the Empire carries a chop,” the streetear said at once. “It’s a mark of status sometimes, a writ of transit others. If you were aiming to go to Central, where the gentry lives, I’d think you’d need nine chops.”

“How do you get them?”

“Like I’ve said, the key is knowledge, boy. You do your part here on the street, talk to the right people, you’ll earn your chops in no time.”

Vaan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Oh, the people in Archades love doing good deeds,” Jules said with an affected laugh. “Why, if they’re helping you out, it must mean they’re superior. Understand, boy?”

“Uh . . . Not sure I do, but I’ll give it a try.” Vaan grinned. “Thanks, Jules!”

He ran over to the princess and her knights. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

“I don’t think this is a job suited for Her Majesty,” Daina said. Frankly, she couldn’t see herself doing it, either. Diving into a rumor mill, fishing out gossip, and then relaying it to these empty sheep in the hopes one would tip her with a meaningless block of wood as if she were an orphan in need of food – she shuddered.

“That’s okay,” Vaan said, undaunted. “Me and Penelo can go. Right Penelo?”

“Of course,” Penelo said immediately. The two ran off, excitedly discussing how best to tackle their chore.

Daina sighed. The stench of the slums did not reach here, but she couldn’t help agreeing with Balthier’s earlier assessment: Something was rotten in the Empire’s capital city. The sooner they got to Draklor and destroyed the Dusk Shard, the better. She could not bear the thought of Rabanastre adopting this veneer of wealth and happiness, which barely concealed the strain the citizens constantly lived under. She turned with solicitude to Ashe. “My lady, shall we find somewhere to wait for them?”

“Yes,” Ashe said. She was pale. She turned to go, but her step faltered. Basch offered her an arm to lean on, which she took.

She must not be feeling well, Daina thought, watching them head toward one of Molberry district’s sidewalk cafés. Then, remembering that there was one more in their little party, she turned to look for Fran.

The viera stood near the streetear. Jules complacently watched Vaan and Penelo join the throng of ardents, but Fran . . .

The viera’s reddish eyes narrowed, staring a hole through Jules’s head, her pouting lips pursed. Jules coughed once but did not acknowledge her. With a flick of her ponytail, Fran marched away. Though she drew many admiring glances after her, she returned none of them, her head high, her heels striking brick.

“Fran, what’s wrong?” Uneasy, Daina looked for Jules, but the streetear was already gone. She hurried after Fran to join Ashe and Basch at the café.

Daina, after paying 5g for a cup of tea, sat in the café without appetite, watching the crowds go by. The four of them tried several subjects, mainly centered on Balthier’s mysterious errand, the state of Archades, and their plan for discovering and eradicating the three Shards, but none of them met with success. Ashe had nothing to say beyond one murmur about Balthier, and Fran even less, which left Daina and Basch to carry the conversation.

Daina wondered what had gone through his head when he’d watched her take control of the battle with the ahriman. Had she proved that she wasn’t interested in a caretaker, or did he see her as reckless – headstrong – childish? She could not forget the weight of his stare after the battle. He did not seem angry any longer, but he was cooler than before. At the beginning of this journey, Daina would have been glad for this indifference. Now, it twisted her heart inside a noose. She longed to apologize for what she’d said on the beach. Unfortunately, cramped around the spindly table with Ashe and Fran, she could not. She stared gloomily into her teacup.

It took the two Dalmascan teens over an hour to appropriate enough chops for them all. By then, Daina was thoroughly sick of their server coming by every five minutes to hint that they should order more food or leave.

“So this is a chop,” Vaan said, turning the rectangular pine card over in his hands. Fire marks listed the name of the guild that had cut it, and there were notches on the side, like key teeth, that would line up with the master chop for authentication.

“Nine for each of us,” Penelo added proudly.

Now classed among proper paying customers, they got in line at the station. A taxi swooped out of the flow of air traffic and glissaded to a precise stop at the curb, the glossair rings in its flat bottom sending out pulses of energy as the driver adjusted the altitude. When the door unsealed with a hiss of air, the passengers inside were able to step from the cab to the curb without risk of falling through a gap in between.

The ride went a little better than tea, although the hovercraft did not have any kind of window, which made Daina feel claustrophobic for the first time in her life. Fortunately, the ride was short, and Balthier was waiting for them when they debarked in the Tsenoble district.

“Ah, so pleased you could join me,” he said, sauntering up to them. “Jules had a morsel for us: A light airship used by Draklor researchers is just up ahead. We’ll take that and go in through the service entrance. Let’s make haste, shall we?”

He seemed more agitated than ever. Basch walked beside him, and Daina could see them talking while they led the way northeast. Or, Basch was talking. Balthier seemed to be turning aside his questions with his usual sarcastic flair.

At the appearance of some Imperial soldiers on the quick-march, everyone backed against the side of a building to let them pass. Except for Ashe. She jogged forward to stand with Basch. And Daina, who followed Ashe like her shadow. The soldiers stopped and saluted a lower judge.

“The complices of the Senate have been quelled, Your Honor,” one of the soldiers reported. “Our forces sustained but light casualties.”

“You have leave to withdraw. One detachment will remain here to guard Draklor.”

The soldiers saluted once more and then departed, while the judge reentered the building.

Guard Draklor! Daina stared at the now-closed door. How were they to get in?

Vaan frowned, peeling himself off the wall. “Do you think they’re on to us?”

“It would seem not,” Basch said, “though this will make our task more difficult still.”

Ashe clenched her fists and strode boldly up to the lone soldier guarding the service entrance. He rebuffed her, sternly announcing that no one was allowed into Central at this time. Defeated, Ashe returned to them.

“Certainly took your time getting here, didn’t you,” Balthier grumbled as they meandered back toward the taxi station. “Off seeing the sights, perhaps?”

“Not likely,” Vaan snorted. “Do you know how long it took to get the chops to get up here?”

Balthier blinked. “What’s that? But I gave Jules some chops.”

“Jules!” Vaan spat the name like he meant to say something a lot worse.

As though summoned, Jules arrived. Though he looked like he belonged face-down in the gutter, the streetear swaggered comfortably among the gentry. Ashe frowned. She stood by Balthier’s side with Fran, Daina and Vaan to their right, Penelo partly hiding behind Basch on the left, presenting a unified front against the streetear.

* * *

“A squad of judges has been sent to Draklor,” Jules said with mock solemnity, perfectly unconcerned with their glares. “You’ll find the service entrance a difficult proposition, I’m afraid.”

“Your doing, no doubt,” Balthier snapped. “You knew the Ministry of Law would move so you had Vaan out collecting chops until the judges could reinforce Draklor.” He grimaced. “Of course. Tell me, how much did the Ministry pay for word of the prodigal son?”

Jules raised his eyebrows, but the sleepy basilisk gleam did not leave his eyes. “The Ministry? Oh, judges make poor customers, my friend. Too many rules, too many laws. Perhaps you didn’t know, Master Balthier, that Draklor is a toy box these days, filled with your lord father’s conceits. All developed without the Senate’s knowledge, of course. Why, not even the emperor knew the full extent of Dr. Cid’s operations. Now, here’s the catch: Since Vayne had himself declared dictator, nary a peep has come out of that laboratory. I know people who would sell their own mum for the merest scrap of information about the goings-on inside Draklor.”

Balthier crossed his arms and threw back his head. “People like Rozarrian sympathizers worried about the Empire’s weapons programs, and anyone else who might be opposed to House Solidor hegemony.”

Daina felt a flare of pride for Balthier. He was angry but still in command of himself. By not glancing at Ashe, he had started to pull control of the situation toward himself.

“So,” he continued genially, “we create a disturbance, and you get your windfall of dirt on Draklor.”

Jules bobbed his greasy head. “And in exchange for your service, I’ve spoken to a cabbie. When he asks where you want to go, tell him: ‘You know where to go.’ Simple, no?”

“Ah, a deal, brokered in true Archades fashion,” Balthier sneered. “Why it’s just like old times, Jules. Brings a tear to my eye.”

With that, he stalked away, his irritation evident in every step. Ashe went with him, giving him only one silent, meaningful look. Fran followed. After a moment, so did Vaan and Penelo, when Basch herded them along.

“Good to be back, eh?” Jules said calmly. “My regards to your lord father, Master Ffamran . . . er, rather, Master ‘Balthier.’ ”

Daina narrowed her eyes at the streetear, but she stayed only long enough to ensure he was not going to tailgate them again. When he ignored her as blatantly as he had Fran, in a swirl of her green coat she pursued her friends.

Nobody seemed willing to break the uncomfortable silence as Balthier hailed a cab. They piled inside, Daina not without some reluctance and a deep breath before she ducked through the door. Vaan, however, lost the battle with his curiosity.

“So, this Jules,” he started with uncustomary hesitancy, casting a sidelong glance at the sky pirate. “Is he some old friend of yours, Balthier? You two seemed . . . close.”

“Close enough for fisticuffs,” Balthier fumed. “Driver! Faster, if you please. I would be loathe to expend any of the violence in my present mood on my companions.”

“S-Sir?” came the confused voice from the front of the cab. Daina saw a pair of nervous eyes study them in the rearview mirror, growing more anxious as they took in the impressive armory collected in his backseat. “Yes, sir!”

Daina felt the increase in speed and altitude, and she grabbed a hand strap with a faint groan. Ashe took her other hand, but it was Basch’s quizzical look that made her straighten up and say, in an admirably normal voice, “I’m fine.”

She was better, of course, when the cab deposited them in Central in front of the towering structure that housed Draklor. The driver saw them all out of his cab with relief, scrutinizing the upholstery as if convinced they had sullied it. He zoomed off with undisguised zeal in pursuit of more genteel patrons.

“Where to?” Vaan asked.

“Come, this way!” Balthier took the lead with his rangy, loping stride. Daina drew the iga blade, holding along her forearm. She positioned her hand so that the green coat concealed the blade. Fran was less subtle, stringing her traitor’s bow and nocking an arrow as she bounded gracefully after Balthier.

Their precaution proved unnecessary. Without a signal, the seven of them slowed. Then they stopped altogether, looking uneasily around. The laboratory consisted of long tiled corridors and tinted windows that opened into white rooms scattered with unrecognizable machinery. Round portals glowed with blue or red light, some of them blocking access to the corridors beyond like bulkhead doors on a ship. Everything was sterile, completely devoid of life.

“It’s too quiet,” Basch murmured in his rough voice.

“Passing strange.” Balthier put a hand on his hip, his betelgeuse dangling from the other. “There are supposed to be guards here.”

“Maybe we’re just lucky?” Vaan guessed, but Balthier humphed.

“Maybe you’re just optimistic,” he said.

Basch drew his sword and nodded at Ashe to do the same. “Something may be afoot. We proceed with caution.”

“No time for caution,” Balthier overrode him. “Step to it! Cid’s chambers are on the top level.”

Penelo who stumbled across the first cooling body and yelped a warning. Several fallen soldiers lined the corridor, blood splattered across the pristine marble tiles. Daina peered around the corner, saw the way clear, and darted into the next room, which held an elevator. With an air of long familiarity, Balthier punched the button for the 67th floor. When the doors whirred open once more, he jogged straight for a door on which a plaque had been affixed, bearing the initials ‘C.D.B.’ His father’s office, Daina realized: Cidolfus Demen Bunansa. Balthier kicked the door, which was already ajar.

“He’s had visitors,” Fran announced. Her upturned nose twitched. “Ones lacking manners, by the look of it.”

The office, a study, was in shambles.

“Someone after the nethicite?” Vaan wondered.

Overturned bookcases lay haphazardly over their shelves’ contents. The desk’s ransacked drawers hung at awkward angles. Loose, torn papers carpeted every inch of the floor. Slowly, Daina walked into the study, placing her boots with care. She knelt by a pile of books and began sorting through them. Indecipherable scientific terms met her eye. Some of the books had also been written in, fine, spidery letters that webbed the pages’ margins.

Balthier stared down at the desk, the files strewn across its top. “The Jagd Difohr, was it?” he said under his breath, and Daina looked up. His practiced devil-may-care expression was cracking, allowing a little of his pain to leak through. “Six years, and ever since you got back, this. What madness found you there?”

* * *

From the corridor, a shout froze them all.

“Up! Above us!”

“Drop bulkheads five and eight! Be to it!”

“They found us!” Alarmed, Vaan grabbed Penelo and thrust her behind him.

Fran’s ear flicked. “His earlier visitors, more like,” she said calmly. “We should lie low for now.”

“No.” His resolution made, Balthier picked up a keycard from the desktop. “We’ll use their confusion. We need to find Cid. Now.”

With the keycard, Balthier opened locked bulkheads, leading them through the maze that was Draklor until Daina was so turned around she couldn’t have found her way out again if she’d tried. A swarm of Imperial soldiers, searching for the unknown intruder, found and attacked them instead. Precious minutes ticked away to the sounds of sword on shield, gunfire, and the labored last breaths of the dying. The odor of ozone burned in Daina’s nose as Imperial magi discharged fire and thunder magick in the narrow corridors, and Penelo and Fran answered with aero and water.

The military wasn’t the only hindrance. Ashe, seeking a red bulkhead release, once opened a door on an infestation of crazed lab rats. Daina wasn’t afraid of any beastie, but she shuddered to think about what had been done to the vermin to make their eyes glow like little red coals. They battled more soldiers and magi to gain control of the southern lift, which carried them higher within the building.

Daina exited the elevator behind Basch. He abruptly dropped into a fighting crouch, his focus snapping to the left-hand corridor and the thunder of booted feet rumbling from within. In an indistinct blur of twin scimitars, a large hume barreled at Basch as if he intended to perform a vivisection on the fly. The newcomer’s swords sliced down; Daina’s heart clawed its way into her throat and lodged there; Basch, in a magnificent display of reflexes, leaped backward. The scythe-like blades missed his stomach by inches.

The strange hume possessed excellent reflexes of his own. He spun in a circle with his momentum and kept coming, bringing one scimitar to bear in less than a second. He brought it down in a sweep that would have felled a tree, but Basch blocked it. The resulting crack made Daina fear for the bones in his arm. The two men struggled for a moment, neither gaining ground. The stranger raised his bald head, blinked, and then grinned.

“Ah! My apologies. You bear not the stench of Cid’s lackeys,” he said, sounding highly amused and not the least winded. His accent was richly Archadian, although Daina had never seen a hume of so dark a skin tone.

The strange hume was taller than Basch and twice as broad as Vaan, and he had not let up the pressure. Basch grunted under the strain. “And you are,” he grated, pushing back, “our earlier visitor.”

“Yes, a valuable man,” a petulant male voice called from the top of a wide, darkened, half-moon staircase, “one I’d sooner not lose. Yet he knows too much!”

Basch and the stranger broke apart. Daina remembered that she should breathe. When the speaker ceased speaking, the dark stranger repositioned his scimitars and charged headlong up the stairs.

Fran raised a long finger and inscribed a glowing blue sigil on the air. The cure magick swooped toward Basch, briefly imbuing his features with an eldritch light. He grasped his forearm, twisting his wrist experimentally, and thanked her. Daina, Ashe, Penelo, and Vaan congregated around him, struggling to suppress their shock. Basch, however, seemed ready to move on, unshaken by the case of mistaken identity and subsequent attempted murder, though it had been his. Of the same mind, Balthier led the way up the staircase.

Draklor’s top floor was made up of one large rotunda, the dome’s glistening windows open to the sky. Sunlight streamed in, hot and burnished. The dark-skinned man stood at the foot of a dais, glaring up at the hume on top of it.

Daina’s eyes widened. This man looked like an older version of Balthier, although his hair was shot with gray and he was softer around the middle. A pair of spectacles pinched the bridge of his nose. He smiled, the same abyss-take-all smile Balthier sometimes adopted, but this man’s was cruel, where his son only achieved mocking.

“Cid!” the large man bellowed. His foghorn voice filled the rotunda like steam about to blow the lid off a giant kettle. “You know deifacted nethicite brought down the _Leviathan!_ How can you persist in this folly?”

“And you’ve come here to stop me?” Dr. Cid asked in a singsong. He cocked his head. “I’d fain see you try.”

“Consider your bones, old man,” Balthier called. “You’re outmatched.”

At first, Cid’s smirk widened, but then antipathy wiped all mirth from his bearded face. “Pirate scum of the skies,” he sneered. “What brings you here?”

“Treasure,” Balthier said easily. “What else would a pirate want? We’ll take the Dusk Shard.”

Fencing with words. A true Archadian skill. Cid mirrored his son’s pose, his mellifluous tones. “You’ve come all this way for that trinket? I thought you above this.”

Then, he did something strange. He looked over his shoulder as though he had heard someone call his name. “Hm? What’s that?” Slowly, he turned back to them, his eyes gleaming behind his pince-nez. His face split in a toothy grin. “Ah,” he breathed. He appraised Ashe, but it didn’t quite sound like he was speaking to her, with pauses between each statement. “The princess of Dalmasca come to visit? . . . She’s not entirely without merit. . . . A test of sorts for our princess?”

“You’re a babbling fool,” Ashe said, the first words she had spoken since they had entered Draklor.

Daina shifted her grip on the iga blade, ready to leap in front of Ashe at the first hint of danger.

“A trial for Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca!” Cid cried exultantly, throwing his arms out. “You lust for the stone’s power, do you not?”

Ashe sharply sucked in her breath and opened her mouth to retort. Abruptly, the big, dark-skinned man stepped in front of her, blocking her view of Cid.

“Lend him not your ears, m’lady,” he said in his deep voice. “He means to use you.”

It seemed negotiations were at an end. Cid did not give an outward signal, but somehow, he made the first move.

Like a low-lying fog or approaching surf, twinkling Mist manifested and rolled toward the dais, tugging at Daina’s ankles, her coat. From the walls, four mechanical rooks separated themselves and hovered around the rotunda. They circled ever faster, their high whining like that of monstrous mosquitoes. Daina, Ashe, Vaan, and Penelo backed into each other, braced by the shoulders of their friends. Daina watched the progression of the rooks, now spinning so fast they seemed like a glossair ring, formed of one solid piece. Dr. Cid lorded over them, a manic grin exposing all of his teeth, his arms uplifted and thrown wide like a benevolent ruler inviting his people’s cheers. The glow from the rooks threw crazy shadows over his face and up the walls.

“Manufacted nethicite! Like Bergan,” Fran spat in distaste, ever sensitive to the vagaries of Mist. She drew an arrow.

“How could you do this?” Balthier asked, almost begged of his father. “How could you fall this far?”


	9. Interlude, part eight

The helm rooks, Daina discovered, were thought-driven combat weapons capable of manipulating Mist. They responded to Cid’s every unspoken wish like extensions of his body. Penelo and Fran unleashed twin blasts of aeroga at the akademician, and the rooks immediately released spells of their own. A glass-like shimmer surrounded Dr. Cid. The magickal wind bounced off him, reflected twice over, and sliced into Daina and the others instead. She shrieked in surprise and pain. Ashe dropped to her knees, slashed as if by a madman’s knife. She looked truly ghastly in the strobing light.

At a signal from Balthier, the men went after one of the rooks, hacking up the machine within seconds. The sky pirate laughed triumphantly. “Always hiding behind your toys,” he called. “Pity if anything were to happen to them.”

Cid replied with gunfire. The remaining rooks zigzagged in front of the akademician, protecting him. Balthier had gotten the measure of their adversary, however. He and Fran fell back; Basch and Vaan moved forward; all four of them concentrated their attacks on a single rook.

“Here!” Penelo crouched by Ashe’s side, curing her wounds with a complicated spell. She then lightly tapped both Ashe and Daina with her multiscale.

Strength flowed through Daina’s body like a drug in her bloodstream. A magickal bravery effect, conferred by the multiscale’s unique properties. Quickly, she traded the iga blade for the longer, deadlier kogarasumaru. To her left, Ashe’s sword joined Basch’s, transforming the third rook into a smoking, sparking mess of metal. Daina, wielding her katana overhead, leaped at the final rook. She brought the sword down. It cleaved the rook, and its halves crashed to the marble floor.

She straightened, flicking excess energy off the kogarasumaru’s curved blade, aware of her friends moving into position around her. One final enemy.

Cid had shouted something when his last rook fell, but what, she couldn’t hear. Daina readied herself. She could see him clearly now, no longer on the dais, a pair of energy rifles in his hands. She crouched, preparing to spring.

He turned his back on her.

The oddness of the move was her only warning. Cid slapped the two rifles together and fired them simultaneously at the rotunda’s far wall; only, it wasn’t a marble wall any longer. Triangular mirrors, previously hidden behind sliding panels, flared with brilliant golden light. The energy doubled, tripled, quadrupled, bounded and rebounded countless times. The rotunda disappeared in a wave of agony. The pain was like a physical thing, slamming into Daina with all the force of an ocean breaker.

When it cleared, she found herself lying on her back, limbs askew, kogarasumaru missing. She turned her head and then gasped. The floor tilted under her, threatening to dump her off the ground, into the emptiness of the sky. Her eyes saw red.

Death sneaked close, stealing over her skin in icy wavelets. Vaan. Penelo. Fran. Balthier. Were they alive, or dead?

Basch. Where was he?

Where was Ashe?

“Daina! Get up!”

She groaned, blinking, but the stubborn redness did not dissipate. The voice was insistent. “You have to get up before he does that again. Get up!”

Vaan. It was Vaan. Blindly, she grasped his arms, helped him pull her to her feet. A bottle met her lips. She drank, coughing on the searing cinnamon flavor of the x-potion. Her heart galloped like a runaway mesmenir, clearing her vision with each rapid thump. Within seconds, she stood with Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe, all haggard but breathing. The four teenagers clustered together, too wounded to continue the fight.

“Basch,” she cried, hardly aware she said it aloud. Then she felt the Mist, saw the fulminating darkness of a quickening, and braced herself. Somehow, they had managed to overpower Cid’s manufacted nethicite – or perhaps he had used it up. Basch was all right, and Cid was going down.

“Heads up!” Balthier yelled. A tsunami of cerulean Mist reared up, blocking the sunlight. When it plummeted, the entire building shook. Then the Mist drained away, taking the fight with it.

Dr. Cid slumped at the foot of the dais, his energy rifles drained and useless. Head cocked, Balthier holstered his betelgeuse and approached him. Before he could do or say anything to his father, the dark-skinned Archadian man appeared out of nowhere, jumped into the air, and, roaring, descended on the helpless Cid.

A blue barrier flared to life around the akademician, the telltale sign of a paling. When the stranger impacted it, it launched him backward like an enormous cannonball. He disappeared somewhere behind the dais.

Stiffly, Cid stood up, straightening his sleeves.

“Venat, you shouldn’t have,” he said, a little breathlessly. The name sounded alien, neither feminine nor masculine: _vehNAH._

A shimmering luminescence warped the air. At Cid’s shoulder, a strange, white creature coalesced. It lacked arms and legs, making Daina think of an elaborately engraved iron maiden. Two burning, flame-white eyes interrupted the black pit of its face. Daina gasped. She’d seen this apparition before! This was the creature that had controlled Mjrn, had appeared with Judge Bergan! Was _that_ what Cid had been speaking to earlier?

Balthier had gone very pale under his tan. Throat working, he managed to say, “This creature . . . So this is your Venat?”

The apparition faded, and Cid ignored his son.

“Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca!” he bellowed. “Just how far will you go for power? Does your lust for nethicite consume you?”

Grinning his hyena grin, he showed them his gloved hands. An angry little snarl escaped Ashe. He held the blue Dusk Shard and the violet Midlight Shard, neither blackened nor dormant but shining with power.

“Am I right?” he asked eagerly. He smirked. “I am, aren’t I. A worthy daughter of the Dynast-King! You would do well to go to Giruvegan. Who knows? You may receive a new stone for your trouble.”

The rotunda’s roof opened like those of the hangars in aerodromes across the continent. On a hot wind, an atomos descended. Cid swung himself aboard.

“Your words mean nothing to me!” Ashe belatedly shouted, proving the opposite to everyone present.

“The reins of history back in the hands of man. I, too, make for Giruvegan,” he said slyly. “Give chase if you dare it!”

The atomos lifted, carrying Dr. Cid away. He was gone, leaving them to lick their wounds in sullen silence.

Balthier grimaced, his face tilted up. “I hate it when he does that,” he muttered.

A deep voice boomed over him. “Mayhap you think me remiss! The Lady Ashe of Dalmasca?”

Ashe turned to meet the burly stranger.

Apparently unharmed, he approached her, strapping his scimitars crosswise to the harness on his back. He brushed by Daina and Vaan as if he had not earlier threatened to kill one of their number. “The sky pirate Reddas, at your employ,” he said grandly.

Daina had time to really take in his appearance now. They were certainly flamboyant, these sky pirates. The bald man wore a loose white shirt, its collar flared and sleeves puffed. A silver sand dollar medallion as big as Daina’s whole hand hung from his thick neck. Lime green leather belts buckled pink breeches around his thighs. His brown belt had five tails, which fanned out like chocobo feathers, hanging to his ankles. He wore sandals the same brown as his skin. A roguish grin lit up his white-bearded face, which was not unhandsome, when he offered his manse for their particular use.

Wearily, Ashe accepted Reddas’s hospitality for all of them. Their errand in the capital had failed the moment Cid boarded the atomos with the shards, and they were once more out of options.

* * *

Not so long ago, Daina had been a guest in another estate. But where Marquis Ondore had held her prisoner in Bhujerba, the Pirate King Reddas afforded her genuine hospitality in the bustling Port at Balfonheim. Daina slept for almost a full day in a wonderfully fluffy bed and awoke to the sea breeze blowing in through open windows.

She moved to the windows to take in the city view. Here in the southeast of Archadia, the weather was mild and the people full of purpose. Shouts from the docks reached her even there, in Reddas’s manse, secluded behind its high, wrought iron gates. Ships of both sea and air called this place home, and there was an atmosphere of harmony throughout.

Ashe was not in the room with her. Her lady’s safety did not concern her here in Balfonheim Port, for it was a free city and Reddas had sworn to see to her every need. Daina bathed and dressed, buckling her katana and ninja sword to her hip. She combed and braided her lengthening hair.

How long had it been since this journey began? How much longer would she be an outcast, dodging Vayne Solidor’s greedy fist? Daina turned the rose barrette over in her fingers, examining each of its five exquisite petals, so thin that the light shone through them. It shimmered, pearlescent. She wondered about the man who had given it to her, wondered about the one who had crafted it. The rose could have been real, so perfect had its likeness been recreated. Had the artisan been Nabradian? Nabudis was gone, but her memory was not. She clipped the rose into her hair and left the room.

A servant found her not long after, browsing a rather whimsical gallery. It displayed artwork from around Ivalice in no particular order, placing a Rozarrian statue of a nude man next to a case of spearheads gathered from ancient Bancourian burial sites. The servant informed Daina that his master required her presence in the billiard room in one hour. She sent him off with her acquiescence, turned around, and came face to face with Basch. If Daina’s cheeks colored, his suffered no change; he’d had the advantage of coming in at the far end of the gallery.

He stopped about six feet from her. Daina’s blush deepened as she remembered the last angry words spoken between them. Taking a breath, she closed the distance to one a little more civil and then looked up at him. He returned her look, as steady and unflinching a stare as he’d ever given her. An unbearable sadness settled over her. Her mouth moved on its own, laying out her apology in a soft, small voice. It couldn’t have been very intelligible, but he seemed to understand.

“Would you join me for a walk?” he asked.

Not trusting herself to speak again, she nodded and fell into step next to him. Their sheathed swords made a slight distance between them necessary, one that was so natural she was not upset by it.

“I also owe you an apology,” he presently said. He led the way onto a balcony, where the tops of coconut-heavy palms rustled in the breeze. “Considering my behavior, your reproofs are not entirely a mystery to me.”

“I do not stand here expecting an apology,” she said.

“An explanation, then?” The ghost of a smile touched his mouth.

She returned it. “I would be grateful.”

“Aye. Awkward though it may be, it is your due.” He closed his eyes. “The name my brother uses, Gabranth – it was our mother’s maiden name.”

Daina blinked. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say hadn’t involved Gabranth, but she did not interrupt.

As she already knew, Basch was a good storyteller. He rested a hand on the balcony’s stone railing, staring out to sea as he spoke. He laid his history before her with feeling.

He grew up in the north, where summer merely meant a lessening of snow. He and his twin brother, as rough and untamed as two boys could be, cared wholeheartedly for their ailing mother in their father’s absence. However, at fourteen years of age, he saw one life end and another begin. Archadia invaded the Republic of Landis, assassinating its governing body of citizens and engulfing its society. Unable to bear the thought of living under Imperial rule but equally unable to convince his brother to move their dying mother, Basch fled south to Rabanastre alone. He meant to restore Landis as a Dalmascan soldier.

“My aid came too late,” he said heavily. “Landis fell completely. I believed Noah and our mother lost. I was not there for them when they needed me. For many years, I heard nothing of them. My tethers cut, I dedicated myself to Dalmasca.”

“What happened to them?” Daina asked. The warm breeze played with her hair, stealing bits of it from its braid. She held it out of her eyes, unwilling to lose sight of Basch even for a fraction of a second. He bowed his head.

“Noah proved himself able to bear shame, as I have,” he said. “He sought aid from Archadia. He embraced our enemy to take our mother back to her homeland, where she died of her illness and her grief. My father and I both, she believed lost to the war. All of this, I learned when the judge magister who tried and sentenced me for a murder that I did not commit wore my face. When my brother’s own sword marked me.” His eyebrows lowered, puckering the scar. “Had I but known they lived . . .”

He stopped, eyes closed, jaw clenched. Then he relaxed and looked at her. His amber eyes were fierce.

“Until I lay this past to rest and see my brother restored, I cannot falter,” he said in a stronger voice. He brushed the rose barrette with his fingertips, tucked her flyaway hair behind her ear and held it there. His gaze made a prisoner of her, but she never wanted less to be free. “I did not foresee someone as lovely – as alive as you entering my life. You are what I have striven to be. Your homeland is fallen, yet you are untarnished by it, unfettered by guilt, and capable of moving forward with strength, dignity, and grace. Your mind is informed, your heart is affectionate, and your judgment is sound. And you are so young.”

Daina indignantly opened her mouth, but he forestalled her with a rueful chuckle.

“Would that your youth were all I had to contend with,” he said. His hand dropped. “If that were all I would treat it with the contempt it deserves. Lady, I would have given chase before you ever gave me a reason to hope.”

There it was. Basch did love her, or was close to it. Yet, she wasn’t so lost in the rush of emotions this engendered to miss his meaning.

“I cannot give you what you ask of me,” he said gently. “Noah waits for me yet. He is there, my past and my future, and he will not let me rest, though I swore my life to Lady Ashe. Between them, there is nothing left.”

“I don’t agree with you,” she said in a voice infuriatingly thick with tears. Hadn’t she proven she didn’t need anything from him – that she was a knight and a protector – that her love had withstood two terrible trials already?

“No,” he said in his rough, low voice, “I do not expect that you would agree. But that is my explanation, however inadequate it may be. I will see this through. I am truly grieved – I am – sorry –”

By then, Daina was crying so bitterly that it was foolish for either of them to linger, and they parted.

* * *

Reddas seemed to disdain amenities such as chairs or glasses. He offered beer in green bottles when he and his guests filed into his room, where the billiard table had been converted into a war map complete with models of the opposing fleets: Archadia red, Resistance white, Rozarria blue. Drinking deeply from a fresh bottle, Reddas lounged against his desk. Daina chose to sit on the floor by one of the stone pillars that passed for a wall. The whole room was open to the sky, its horizon filled with the blue Naldoan Sea. With her back to the light, she hoped, her tear-streaked face might escape detection.

Ashe joined her, staring down into Balfonheim Port while the breeze teased her bobbed, flaxen hair. Neither the grace of full sails nor that of wheeling terns brought a smile to her eyes.

“They choose to supply the Resistance, yet raise not a sword in aid,” she said by way of an opening. “What city could do this?”

“A city of men without countries,” Reddas said unapologetically. “Pirates of the sea and of the sky. Few are they who would fain lay down their lives for a friend, let alone a king.”

Ashe turned to him. “The marquis – he is set on war?”

“The time approaches when he must make his position vis-à-vis the Empire clear. When he helped you off the _Leviathan,_ he spited the judges full sore. He cannot sit in idleness and expect to avoid a reckoning. The marquis shares my distaste for war, yet if it comes to it, he will show no quarter.”

Reddas went on to explain his part in the Resistance and how Marquis Ondore had supported his infiltration of the capital to acquire the Dusk and Midlight Shards for him, and finally Ondore’s intention to side with Rozarria if the stones could not be had.

“It’s just what Vayne wants,” Basch said, crossing his arms. “Lure the Rozarrians and the Resistance to the field, then crush both with the nethicite.”

“I think not,” Balthier disagreed. “Cid has the stone. We smash it to pieces with the Sword of Kings. Vayne will be left holding nary a thing.” His brown eyes roved over them all and settled, unsmiling, on the princess. “Time is short. We follow Cid. He’s heading towards Giruvegan.”

“Giruvegan,” Ashe repeated in half a whisper.

Fran came forward, long legs encased in the ornate latticework of her armor. “It is told of in a song of my people,” she said. “ ‘On the farthest shores of the river of time, shrouded deep in the roiling Mist, the holy land sleeps: Giruvegan. Who knows the paths? The way to its doors?’ ”

“Then you seek the Jagd Difohr,” Reddas said in answer. The name stirred something fleeting in Daina’s memory; she had heard it somewhere before, recently. “Deep within the jungle of Golmore, in a corner of the Feywood, a Mist storm surges and seethes.”

“Then that’s it,” Vaan said excitedly. “Let’s go!”

“Right,” Penelo agreed.

Apparently, the war council was at an end. Vaan grabbed Penelo’s hand and dragged her out of the room. Basch and Fran immediately followed.

Balthier, however, stopped and turned back. “Not coming, Reddas? Forget your precious nethicite already?”

“Cid’s words rang hollow to me,” Reddas said slowly, placing his feet on the floor. “I will follow another course.”

“Ah, another lead then, is it? You’re well informed.”

“I could well say the same to you, pirate.”

The doors burst open, and Vaan impatiently said, “Hurry it up, or we’ll leave without you.”

“Ah, Vaan!” Reddas cried. “I’ve had some of my men check on this Feywood. Best ask what they’ve found.”

“Okay! Thanks for the help, Reddas.” Vaan disappeared.

Reddas burst out laughing. “Fly first, ask questions later. Your apprentice is more pirate than you.”

“I don’t have an apprentice,” Balthier snapped. He left.

Daina and Ashe moved to go also.

“Princess Ashe!” Reddas stood away from his desk, black eyebrows lowered. “I would hear your heart. If Dr. Cid has spoken the truth, you may well be rewarded with more nethicite in Giruvegan. Tell me: Do you still desire the stone?”

“I desire its power,” Ashe said clearly. She twisted her ring and lowered her voice as if ashamed of her own heart. “I want, yet I also fear. I must protect Dalmasca. I can’t afford to fear anything.”

Reddas appeared to mull something over, but then he said, with a compassion that stabbed at Daina’s very soul, “Do not forget Nabudis. That is my only counsel for you.”

Ashe nodded. Then, she looked for Daina. Although a little shaken at the reminder of her lost home, Daina marked her approval with a nod. The two women exited the manse for the courtyard that fronted Saccio Lane.

Outside, Vaan spoke with Reddas’s associates. Daina was a little baffled by Reddas’s term _men,_ for one of them was a rather eye-wateringly voluptuous woman, and one a small nu mou with a live parrot perched on his hat.

“No one has ever found this so-called Feywood, Vaan,” Daina said, and the nu mou and his parrot both looked at her.

“If that be true, where the stories be comin’ from, eh?” The nu mou chuckled, only his wet, black nose showing from beneath the brim of his tattered, pointed hat.

“Fiction?” she suggested. The parrot squawked. She wrinkled her nose at it. “Faram forbid anyone makes up a story to entertain a barroom after too much beer.”

“So you’re saying we should give up?” Vaan asked her. “We have to try.”

“Yes, but –”

“No buts,” Balthier butted in. “It’s there, all right.”

Daina turned away with a shake of her head. Let them have their way. Either they would find the Feywood, or they would not. Searching for a myth was better than staying there.

Balthier and Basch settled down to plot their route to Golmore, and the unknown Feywood beyond, while Fran and Penelo listened. Daina kept walking, out of earshot, trusting to the others to hash out the plan.

“It is not truly the Feywood’s dubious existence that troubles you,” Ashe said. She hurried to catch up. “Is it Reddas’s parting words that eat at you now? Or is it something else, a little nearer to the heart?”

Dismayed, Daina met her friend’s eyes, went pink, and said nothing.

Faintly, Ashe smiled. “At times you may be quiet, but at others, your opinions are decidedly voluble. It is unlike you to be silent now.” Her eyes dropped. She twiddled her ring. “Can you not confide in me? Do you trust me so little?”

“No! My lady!” Daina cried. Then she remembered where they were and checked to make sure no one had heeded her outburst. “It has nothing to do with trust,” she said in a calmer tone.

Ashe waited, her expression sympathetic.

“I should have spoken to you about this sooner, but too much troubles your mind already. I could not bear to add myself to your problems.” She stopped, searching for the right words. “I am confused. I feel as though I have betrayed you. For some time now, I have been torn between my vows and my feelings. I thought that I could indulge the latter without interfering with my duty to you.”

“You still think that way,” Ashe said. When Daina nodded, Ashe asked, “Basch?”

Another nod.

“The only betrayal would lie in deceiving yourself,” Ashe murmured. A single tear slipped down her smooth cheek. “My marriage with Rasler was political, but it meant so much more than that to he and I. Rasler did not believe in playing a part. I know, Daina, that you are not very different from him. You and Basch do not move in estranged circles. Take your chance now, before this terrible war rips it away from you.”

She grasped Daina’s hands earnestly. “Follow your happiness, and rest assured that I hold absolute faith in your honor to me.”

“Hey, you two! Let’s go!” Vaan yelled.

Daina squeezed Ashe’s hands in gratitude, and, with a stronger heart, went to join her friends.

* * *

The Feywood not only existed, but in its dark, musty way, it was beautiful. The snow fell more softly than phoenix down, muffling all sound. When a sparkling snowfly fluttered onto Daina’s glove, it slowly lit up and dimmed exactly like a firefly, though it resembled a snowflake more than an insect.

Wild and untouched by the sentient races of modern-day Ivalice, the Feywood reeked of the ancients. Death held as much sway as life, making it a halfway place, high, frigid, and crystalline with Mist. Beasts that thrived in jagd attacked with a ferocity unmatched by anything except, perhaps, tiamats, the white wyrms in the Henne Mines. Magicks stronger than anything Fran could teach Penelo cast confusion over the party, preventing them from distinguishing friend and foe. Comrades fell asleep and dropped to the mulch in the middle of battles against tiny, black-furred, bunny-like mus or patches of deadly nightshades, plants that pulled themselves out of the ground and wandered around like beggar children, their purple fruit-heads splitting wide in devilish grins. Spell-induced blindness incapacitated them against stone golems and flaming cerberuses. Their own magicks worked against them when employed on the feathered mirrorknights, giant, flightless birds that reared up against the dead sky, armored head and torso like humes. The armor threw their magick back at them, reflected twice over. The mirrorknights’ metallic beaks punched holes through their defenses.

It was a chaotic place, a labyrinth of earth and undergrowth. Frozen lakes gleamed like polished glass, deceptively deep, and hoary trees kinked up their roots to trip unwary feet. The party moved deeper into the forest, and the crunchy snow piled up deeper likewise. Daina squinted against the afterimages of Mist that showed her Ashe walking both ahead of her and to the side. It swallowed up Balthier completely, replacing him with a snarling cerberus. Saliva drooled from its saber-like fangs. The kogarasumaru flashed out. She slew the hellish canine and moved dreamily on, bemused and enchanted by the Mist.

“There. What is that?”

She had no idea who had asked the question. It had been so long since anyone had spoken that for a moment Daina struggled to find words within herself. Language seemed to have vanished along with her appetite, leaving only a vague weightlessness behind.

Ashe stepped forward, mounting the low steps to a large pentagonal shrine. Its clean pillars and dome seemed untouched by time or weather, a gazebo-like structure that could hold twenty people beneath its roof. Ashe’s red boots scraped on stone as she turned in a slow circle. She studied the tiles beneath her feet. “This is a . . . Feywood glyph? ‘Illusion betokens the true way,’ ” she read.

“What does that mean?” Vaan asked, nonplussed.

“I do not know.”

Daina climbed the steps also, watching her boots pass through the glowing glyph as if through water. Basch wandered around the shrine. When she looked over at him, she saw beyond him, framed perfectly between two pillars, a forest scene as lush as the Salikawood, where snow never fell, but more primal, full of ferns, cycads, and palms. She gaped at the vision. It did not fade, despite the expanse of glittering white snow on either side. Basch, catching her bewildered expression, turned around and chuckled.

“There,” he said roughly. “That is our way.”

So they went, stumbling across more shrines in the snow. Feral behemoths, breechclouts knotted around their hips, their wolf-heads sitting squarely between their furred shoulders, and giant, winged, preying mantises prevented their walking in a straight line. They had to backtrack often, although the Mist hid their footprints from view. Eventually, after traveling in interminable circles, they reached a high gate. No matter how they pushed and prodded at it, and, in some cases, swore at it, none could open it.

_I wonder now that any stories of this place exist,_ Daina thought to herself. _Once in, how does anyone get out?_

While staring in equal parts frustration and stupefaction at the immovable gate, Penelo suddenly said, “Wait, it says something here.” Though she stood on tiptoe, however, squinting up at the colossal gate, she could not seem to make out the inscription.

“Let me see.” Impatiently, Vaan pushed to the front and looked over her head. He stared at the inscription for a minute. “I can’t read it.”

Penelo stuck her tongue out at him, and he made a face at her.

Fran was tall enough to look at the inscription straight on, which she did, to Vaan’s disgust. “It is severely damaged. Only one line seems to have survived. ‘. . . over the one gate the Gigas holds sway,’ ” she translated in her oddly musical accent.

“Is that all?” Vaan asked with a pout. He scratched his head. “What does that mean?”

Suddenly, Ashe gasped. She reached into her pocket and withdrew the esper Belias’s crystal. Once it hit the frigid air, it blazed like a coal. She dropped it with an expression of startled pain. It sizzled on the ice. The gigas stepped forth without being summoned. Four arms forming fiery sigils, it commanded the gate to open, bowed, and then returned to its enforced sleep.

A warm, dry breeze blew through the fissure, promising escape from the iced-over Feywood. Ashe and Balthier looked at each other, condensing breath devoid of words, the esper’s true worth freezing in the still air. Gate Gigas. If Ashe had not gained Belias’s servitude in the depths of Raithwall’s tomb, might they all have died, trapped in the endless snow?

* * *

Giruvegan. The ancient city stretched out before them, age-blackened and utterly still. Daina marveled at the cushioning silence and at the blue crystal walkways, which their passage did not scuff.

“ ‘On the farthest shores of the river of time,” Ashe murmured, “shrouded deep in the roiling Mist.’ ”

“What is it, Fran?” Penelo asked, and Daina looked back.

Fran, who had a fist pressed to her chest, said with difficulty, “The Mist runs thick here.”

“Like on the _Leviathan?”_ Vaan queried nervously.

“Do not worry,” Fran said, smiling. She straightened. “I will behave myself. The Mist here is . . . cooled.” Her smile faded. “I sense something like the shadow here.”

“Venat,” Balthier translated. Briskly, he added, “It appears Cid has yet to arrive. We’ll lie in wait for him here.”

“So we’re not going inside?” Penelo asked.

“Not unless you want to end up twisted, like the old man,” he said darkly. His quick eyes took in Ashe’s posture, taut and unbreathing as if she was listening with all her might. Head cocked, he approached her. He studied her face, and then scanned the empty walkways ahead. “Something there?”

Daina looked. She saw nothing, but Ashe started moving again, toward the city.

“What is it?” Penelo whispered.

“She can see him,” Vaan said cryptically, his face sad. “Let’s follow her.”

“What?” Daina belatedly ran after them. “Who?”

Vaan did not answer. Perplexed, she took her place behind and to the left of her lady. Ashe had asked for confidence from Daina, but she apparently harbored some secrets of her own. Daina glanced at Vaan. Secrets that at least one other person shared. She decided that was good enough, and let the subject drop.

The builders of Giruvegan, who had died out so long ago that not a word of their history remained, had left more than their city behind. A strange statue knelt near the way stone into the city, a swordsman of incredible bulk. At first, Daina assumed he’d been carved in a posture of defeat, bent impossibly far over his weapon. As they got closer, she realized his profile was so truncated because he lacked a head. Instead, two stunted, ragged wings rose from his shoulder blades. Penelo and Vaan studied the statue nervously.

Daina drew the kogarasumaru. The esper Belias had seemed mere statuary, also, and Belias had been the one to unlock the gate.

“My lady, touch the way stone. I will stay behind in case this –” Daina nodded at the headless statue – “decides to wake up and make trouble.”

“We’ll stay, too,” Vaan said.

Penelo, though white-faced, nodded.

“I mislike this,” Fran said, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. She selected an arrow. “The sleeping heart stirs. Be ready.”

“Aren’t we always?” Balthier drawled, opening his pouch of shot. “Let’s on with it then, Princess.”

Basch, however, made an alteration in their plans. “Daina, Penelo, go with Her Highness. Balthier –”

Swiftly, the sky pirate nodded and offered his arm to Ashe. “See you on the other side, Captain.”

Daina wanted to intervene. Basch was sending the weaker women away. Sure, the statue was a man of disproportionate size, but her skills had seen her through to this point. Hadn’t she led half their party to defeat an ahriman? Why doubt her now?

Hesitating, she looked at the arrangement again. Basch, Fran, and Vaan were to face the enemy in front of them, one whose strength was known, while Ashe, Balthier, and Penelo were headed into the unknown on the other side of the way stone. Basch gave her a slight nod. He was entrusting them to her, knowing she would balance out their strengths. Daina gripped the kogarasumaru. She needed to protect her lady, and so she went without complaint.

The last glimpse she had of Basch was when the way stone activated, filling her body with light. The headless statue rose up, wings extended, sword in hand, and charged the three warriors waiting for it. Then the way stone’s magicks whisked her away.

* * *

It deposited them inside the city, right between a pair of mythril golems.

The golems looked like miniature castles propped between two tower-legs, complete with furnaces burning in their chests and battlements ramping across their shoulders. A large circular foot, for lack of a better term, whistled toward Penelo. With warning shouts, the four humes scattered. The foot crunched into the floor, cracking the tiles. A magick storm ensued between Penelo and the two constructs. Ashe and Daina hacked at the stone tower-legs until they fell. Then, using Ashe’s shield, Daina smothered the flames in their furnaces until the angry light in their eyes died.

Panting, the two women looked at each other. For no reason, they started laughing.

“Well, it’s good to see you two having fun,” Balthier commented. He frowned when Penelo giggled, too. “Let’s not give in to hysterics, ladies. I’m afraid you have me severely outnumbered.”

“Afraid of a few tears, Balthier?” Penelo teased.

He fixed his cuff. “Spotted silk isn’t my style.”

“Look at this place,” Daina gasped, holding her side.

Giruvegan defied the laws of physics. It enclosed itself like the spiraling interior of a seashell. A series of steps and ramps led up, down, and sideways. As far as she could see, fuelless lights lined the walls and ceiling like an eternity of stars.

“Should we wait, or should we go?” Penelo asked.

“We go,” Ashe said. “The longer we stay in one place, the easier it will be for whatever now lives in this city to find us, in greater numbers than we can handle.”

So they went, traversing the water steps, sorely missing their comrades as they battled through roving bands of behemoths, which clutched ensorcelled swords, clusters of aggressive vivians, flora that were members of the carnivorous malboro family, and spiteful gargoyle barons, whose corrupt natures belied their beautiful, white-feathered wings. Despite these beasts, the city rang with a certain kind of emptiness. There was no hint of civilization. No homes. No shops. No vehicles. No garbage. Just the endless stairs and the endless lights. Daina felt as though she’d been dropped down a well, never to be seen again.

* * *

“It can’t stop here,” Daina muttered. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

They needn’t have worried about waiting. The water steps were more deceiving than Daina had first thought. Although they had never once turned around or retraced their path, Balthier bit off an oath when they arrived at the same way stone that had brought them to the interior of the city, or so he thought; Ashe had disagreed, for there was no trace of the mythril golems. While they stood around arguing about it, Vaan, Basch, and Fran appeared, ending all doubt.

“Daedalus is vanquished!” Vaan crowed before taking in their flushed, disgruntled faces.

Once again, they had traipsed down the steps, ramps, and platforms. They stuck to the right-hand railing at Penelo’s innocent suggestion (“If you keep one hand on the wall, like this, you’re bound to come to the exit sooner or later, see?”) because no one could come up with any better ideas. Now, they stood staring down into the black depths of the city. No more ramps. No more turns.

“Dead end,” Basch murmured.

“Maybe not.” Vaan, who had knelt on the edge to peer over it, stood and straightened his sash. “See those down there?”

“What down where?” Daina asked. “Those green lights?”

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea about that,” Vaan said. He backed up and then charged at the drop-off.

“Vaan!” several people yelled.

With a sound like a gunshot, brilliant green light flared, creating a suspended walkway below him. The texture appeared similar to the viera’s barriers in Golmore Jungle, repelling him the way a solid floor would. Laughing in triumph, he came to a halt far beyond the edge of the water steps and spun around, his flaxen hair wild.

“Where would you even get an idea like that?” Ashe exploded. “You could have been killed!”

“I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “This just seems like a leap of faith kind of place.”

Shaking their heads, the others followed him onto the magickal walkway. With each footstep, the tiles of light chimed. It was eerie, and beautiful, and, in a way, frightening. Daina imagined that this was what it must have been like to walk among the stars, free of the invisible chains of Ivalice. They kept going, down, deep, getting ever closer to a brown shape suspended in the distance.

It was big enough to swallow Rabanastre whole, Daina thought with wonder. It appeared to be a crystal, rough and rugged like a slaven warder’s shell, with smaller crystals – each a glowing palace in itself – orbiting its crust like islands of purvama.

“I can’t shake the feeling we’re somewhere we’re not meant to be,” Penelo said.

“Yeah, it’s exciting,” Vaan said. His hair was still sticking up on one side like dandelion fluff.

“Exciting?”

Basch frowned. “You are not troubled by the unknown? Who can say what lies ahead? We may encounter the very creators of nethicite.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what we’ll find,” Vaan said seriously. He grinned. “I like it better that way.”

Balthier kneaded his forehead. “You’re sounding more like the sky pirate every day.”

The green walkway led them to more water steps, which in turn put them right in the path of a tyrant. The massive wyrm roared in displeasure, but it stood no chance against the seven fighters. Daina paused a moment to mourn the necessity of kill or be killed when they knocked the creature off its platform and it fell, shrieking, into the black depths. Then she moved on.

To her amazement, Giruvegan’s ephemeral street led them inside the massive, floating crystal, which turned out to be as hollow as a termite mound. The green walks of light continued, conducting them ever deeper. Daina lost all track of time inside the crystal, only aware of its passage when she grew hungry, thirsty, or weary. They relied on ethers to keep their bodies moving. No one wanted to stop in this alien place, even to sleep.

Several times, they ran up against the green light, which formed a vertical barrier and kept them from continuing. Daina grew thoroughly disheartened at their constant backtracking to seek the gate stones which, when activated, removed the barriers. She viciously attacked any beast or undead being that came near, just for something to do.

“I’ve never seen this much Mist,” Penelo breathed. It was dark and light at the same time, and cool against their skin, like water or silk. She touched Fran’s arm. “Are you all right?”

Fran smiled. “I am fine. Thank you.”

“Is that nethicite?” Ashe approached a node in the crystal’s wall, which glowed like flame under glass. It was roughly the size of an emeralditan tortoise.

“I wonder.” Fran crossed her arms, her good humor gone.

“With that much nethicite in one’s grasp –”

“You could destroy all of Ivalice if you wished it,” Fran finished coyly.

Ashe frowned at her and then turned her glare on the nethicite node. Making up her mind, she strode toward it, hand outstretched.

Instantly, the nethicite transported them wholesale into a new area.

“What happened?” Daina asked wildly, looking around. She expected more of the same: a womb of crystal and chimes underfoot. Instead, they walked through a red-hued prison, dark, menacing, and constructed of interlocking stone laid out in geometric patterns. Basch and Balthier checked the walls, the cracks where the walls met the floor, and craned their necks to examine the ceiling. There was no way out. Then Daina heard something. A whisper next to her ear.

“Curse the light,” it said.

Daina whipped around, but there was no one there. “Did you say something?” she asked Penelo.

Eyes wide, Penelo shook her head.

“I wielded utter control over the souls that wander the underworld,” the voice whispered, sibilant and angry. “It was I who advised our leader Ultima of the gods’ hidden weaknesses. It was I who descended to the land to teach humes of destruction and evil.”

Everyone was on alert now, casting around for the speaker. To Daina, the whispery voice was a shrill screech, piercing her eardrums. Hands over hear ears, she could not draw her sword.

“For this,” the voice hissed, and Daina cried out in pain, “I was stricken down and _bound!”_

* * *

A creature that was both woman and equine burst out of the air in the middle of the red prison. Longbow keening, she shot Fran and then Basch before anyone had a chance to bring their weapons to bear. Fran was lucky; the arrow barely nicked the side of her neck, but Basch grunted, yanking the arrowhead out of his thigh. The creature’s blank white eyes fixed on Daina, the hatred borne of centuries of imprisonment burning in their depths. The lower half of her red-skinned face was wrapped in a mask, which prevented her from speaking aloud. And which made no sense, for Daina could hear her loud and clear, still recanting the esper’s fall from grace. The esper nocked another arrow and aimed it at Daina, who did not see, who was crippled by the bodiless voice.

The voice, like the slimy tentacle-roots of a malboro, wormed through Daina’s skull, whispering maleficent curses. Daina broke, sobbing, pressing harder against her ears.

“Daina!” Vaan shook her shoulder. When she did not respond, he faced the esper and shouted, “Try that on me!”

Malevolent, crazed laughter reverberated around the crystal chamber. The esper’s bowstring sang. Vaan, with both shield and sword, bunted the arrows aside, cutting them out of the air. The burning eyes narrowed. The creature galloped around the room, forcing Vaan to give chase. Balthier loaded his aldebaran, his hands steady. When the esper bore down on him, he fired point blank into her face. Flailing, the creature fell back.

Daina’s mind was momentarily clear. The sharp, loud crack of the gun had shocked the voice into nonexistence. Nauseated, she struggled to draw the kogarasumaru, fumbling with her coat. Standing protectively in front of her, Vaan readied his sword. Penelo brandished her avenger dagger. Ashe, elegant and strong-willed, also stood against the creature.

The esper recovered, stamping her hooves. She let loose another arrow, which struck Balthier in the arm; the aldebaran jammed as it bounced off the floor. They would not be saved by its noise a second time.

“Silence,” the voice commanded. “There is only silence in death!”

“Shut up!” Daina screamed. The four teenagers attacked as one.

The esper’s bow fell to the floor with a twang, its wood sundered. She retreated, kicking out with her hooves, plying black magicks over their heads that they, shielded by Fran’s green magick, grimly ignored.

“Her name!” Ashe shouted, her voice tiny and indistinct. “Listen for her name!”

“Silence! Silence! Silence!”

“I can’t hear anything!” Vaan bellowed back. In spite of the force he was obviously using, he sounded like a fly buzzing in a separate room.

_“Silence! Silence! Silence!”_

Daina didn’t care. All she wanted was to shut this evil thing up before her ears started to bleed. She pressed her attack harder, thrusting the kogarasumaru into the creature’s woman-stomach. Instead of blood, light and shadow streamed out.

A shock ran up her arms and erupted in her brain like a volcano spewing white-hot against a night sky. Incredibly, she had heard it. The esper’s name, wrapped in darkness and pain. This one was known as The Whisperer.

“Shemhazai!” she screamed.

A look of grudging respect blazed from the white eyes. Shemhazai succumbed to her enchanted sleep and rewarded Daina with her crystal. Instantly, the interlocking stone blocks parted, showing them the way out of the prison, which darkened into a black hole before it closed up again behind them.

* * *

The ethers were gone.

No one mentioned it. There was nothing anyone could do about it.

Like a captured mantis, The Whisperer’s crystal buzzed in Daina’s palm unpleasantly. She put it in a pocket of her shorts while Penelo and Fran healed the wounded. Inside the crystal, their magicks were amazingly potent. They gathered themselves together and moved on.

Thankfully, not far from Shemhazai’s prison, they encountered another way stone. Ashe activated it with a touch, and it transported them with cold efficiency.

* * *

Sunlight pierced Daina’s eyes. She winced against the glare. After so many hours – or was it days? – inside the great crystal, surrounded by hard-edged facets of orange and yellow, the expanse of blue sky burned her retinas. The question was on her lips, but she swallowed it. No one would know where they were any better than she. It was somewhere mystical. Somewhere mortals weren’t meant to tread, perhaps, stranded on this lonely platform in a sky that showed no intention of ever meeting the ground. Six empty thrones guarded the outer edge of the platform. Off in the distance, more platforms floated, dark and featureless. Below, the sky turned green. The ground? Daina reeled back from the edge.

“Where is everyone?” Ashe asked.

Startled, Daina went to her but was repelled by a blanket of thickened air. Ashe’s gray eyes were wide, frantic. She stared through Daina as if she couldn’t see her.

“My lady?” Daina ventured. She prodded at the invisible barrier, but the princess walked away, still searching. “My lady!”

Vaan and Penelo also called to her. “Ashe? Ashe!”

“Peace, she cannot hear,” Basch said.

“But –” Daina started.

“Fear not, princess of Dalmasca,” intoned a voice that had never passed through living vocal chords. The voice possessed a strange duality, both male and female, its accent antiquated, an older form of Archadian. “We occuria have chosen you, and you alone.”

Balthier and Fran exchanged looks.

What was going on? Forgetful of Basch’s advice, Daina pounded on the barrier. A paling! Each time her fists connected, brilliant blue light flared, but Ashe did not see it.

“Ashe!” Daina yelled.

“Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca,” said the androgynous, bodiless voice. “We see your heart desires power, and power most holy shall we grant. Seek you the Sun-Cryst, slumb’ring star. In tower on distant shore, it dreams. The mother of all nethicite, the source of its unending power. The Dynast-King, his fallow shards, coarse trinkets cut from Sun-Cryst’s light.”

The speaker had Ashe’s full attention. “Such power exists?” she asked intently.

“In times that are long passed away, we thought to save this Ivalice and chose Raithwall the Dynast-King. He took the sword and cut the Cryst. Three shards he took from its gilt grasp. His words and deeds run through your veins.”

Daina listened, pressed up against the barrier, her eyes never leaving her lady. It was disconcerting to watch Ashe speaking to no one and to hear no one answer.

“That’s why I was given it,” Ashe breathed. “The Sword of Kings.”

“The treaty held with kings of old is but a mem’ry, cold and still,” the invisible being droned. “With you we now shall treat anew, to cut a run for hist’ry’s flow.”

In front of the princess, a second greatsword drew substance from the glowing blue light bleeding from the paling. This new sword was silver and tanzanite. Ashe gazed at it, her hands slack at her sides.

“Now take this sword, this Treaty-Blade,” the voice said. “Occurian seal, mark of your worth. Cut deep the Cryst and seize your shards. Wield Dynast-King’s power! Destroy Venat!”

Ashe was not the only one who gasped. “But Venat,” she said. She hesitated. “Venat is an occurian. A being like you.”

“What did she say?” Balthier asked sharply.

“Venat is a heretic!”

The buzzing voice drowned out Balthier’s question. A wind that tasted of fury, betrayal, jealousy, and hatred blasted forth. Ashe threw up her arms to shield her face.

“Ashe!” Daina screamed.

“The nethicite is ours to give, to chosen bearer or to none,” the occurian seethed in a voice of gravel and metal filings, heedless of Daina’s attempts to get past the paling. “The heretic trespassed and set the rose of knowledge in Man’s hand. With imitations they profane, it is anathema to us.”

Daina’s temper overflowed. The bodiless words acted too much like Shemhazai’s, prying into the cracks of her skull. Ashe needed her. Now. Heedless of all else, she drew the kogarasumaru and swung it.

The blue paling flung Daina backward like a ball rebounding off the courts. The backlash of energy wrenched the kogarasumaru from her grasp. She landed hard, skidding to the edge of the platform.

Inside the barrier, the player poised on the heavenly stage took no notice of the farce beyond it.

“We give you now the stone and task,” a second occurian voice said, ringing like rusty iron bells. “Administer judgment: Destroy them all!”

“Judgment?” Ashe repeated, uneasy now.

Daina’s head ached. It throbbed with each muscle contraction. She struggled to sit up, accepted the hands that reached down to help her. Vaan, she assumed, held her hand like a scared child. She hung on just as tightly.

“Destroy them all?” Ashe was saying. “The Empire?”

A third invisible occurian spoke. “The humes ever skew hist’ry’s weave. With haste, they move through too short lives. Driven to err by base desires, t’ward waste and wasting on they run.”

“Undying, we occuria light the path for wayward sons of Man,” the first put in. “Oft did we pass judgment on them so that Ivalice might endure. Eternal, we are hist’ry’s stewards, to set the course and keep it true. The chosen is our hand, our fist, to let live some and crush the rest. Princess, you have been chosen. Take revenge against those who stole your kingdom. Fulfill your role as savior.”

Dreamily, Ashe reached for the floating sword, but at the last second, hesitated.

“Attain to your birthright!” the occurian shouted.

Ashe’s eyebrows lowered. Stung by the thousands of wasps in occurian vocal chords, she grabbed the Treaty-Blade.

Everything went white.

When Daina’s vision returned, they were still on the platform. Holding the greatsword, Ashe stared pensively out at the deep purple sky; in an instant, it seemed, night had fallen. A great pressure had lifted, and Daina knew that the invisible occuria had departed.

“Ashe!” Vaan exclaimed, and the princess turned. He ran forward. “What’s with these occuria? What gives them the right to tell you what to do?”

“Will you take revenge, as they ask?” Fran wanted to know.

Daina wanted to know something else. If Vaan was over there, then who –?

Basch let her go once her terrified grip slackened. He looked at the princess, whose face bespoke her shock.

“We could not see them, but we heard the occuria speak,” he told her, answering her unasked question. “They may be gods, but we are the arbiters of our destiny. Your Highness, I am against this. The Empire must pay, but destruction?”

“I believe they are only pretending to godhood,” Daina said angrily. “Immortality lends credence to their claim; who could prove them false? That must have been why Raithwall left the nethicite-destroyer with the kiltias. A failsafe.”

Basch nodded once, conceding her point. Ashe looked down, her face troubled.

“Um, does anyone know what happened to Dr. Cid?” Penelo asked. “Wasn’t he saying he’d be here?”

Basch frowned, having obviously forgotten about the akademician. “He should’ve arrived by now.”

“And I should’ve realized by now.” Fury darkened Balthier’s handsome face. “He’s not coming. He laid out the bait, and we bit. Remember what he said? He wanted Ashe to get the stone. He wanted that all along. That’s why he flaunted his nethicite and reeled us in with stories about Giruvegan. All to bring Ashe to the occuria.”

Penelo’s pretty features pinched in concentration. “But wait – if we got a hold of the nethicite, wouldn’t that be bad for the Empire?”

“Maybe he wants to see what happens when foes with nethicite collide?” Balthier suggested. He sniffed in disgust. “That’d be just like _Doctor_ Cid.”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at Ashe. She studied the ridiculously large gems set in the Treaty-Blade’s hilt.

“I will search out the Sun-Cryst,” she said.

That was that, then. Daina had neither the inclination nor the energy to discuss it any longer. When Basch turned to go, she followed him, her hand still cupped around the remembrance of the warmth of his.

“ ‘History is built by our hands,’ ” Balthier said to one of the unoccupied thrones, causing Ashe to pause. “That’s his favorite line. He’d never stand by and watch the occuria’s stones shape things.” He sighed, as close to sadness as Daina had ever heard him. “So. He was talking to Venat all along. He wasn’t mad at all then, was he?”

He cast a look at Ashe, full of meaning, and she nodded sympathetically in reply.

Getting out of Giruvegan proved no easier than getting in, but at the final way stone, Basch said to Fran, “ ‘In tower on distant shore dreams the Sun-Cryst.’ Do these words mean aught to you?”

The beautiful viera shook her head.

“Didn’t Reddas say he was going to follow some other course?” Vaan piped up. “Maybe he found out something that can help.”

“I’d rather stay out of that sky pirate’s debt, thank you,” Balthier said.

“What’s wrong with Reddas? If you can’t trust your own kind, who can you trust?”

Balthier sneered at him. “You’re an expert on pirating now, are you?”

Vaan tried to retort, but the way stone activated, whisking them away.

* * *

Against Balthier’s inclination, they returned to Balfonheim Port to seek Reddas. Daina heard the big man long before they reached his billiard room.

“Ships in the water!” he roared. There followed a crash. “Send fishing dories if need be, I care not. Glossair engines are as good to us as sky to a fish. Leave what boats have foundered. I want souls saved, not driftwood!”

As if precipitated by his volume, three pirates jumped out of the room – Rikken, Elza, and the nu mou Raz – each throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Ashe and the others before they scurried down the central stairs.

Reddas looked up as Ashe entered, closely followed by her warband, and his fierce expression softened somewhat.

“Our armada ran afoul of bad water near the Ridorana Cataract,” he explained without preamble. “All engines stopped asudden, becalmed. Trouble with a Mist thick as death, it seems.” He ran a hand over his pate. “Those seas are jagd. I expected airship trouble, not a fleet foundering midst the waves.”

He threw himself into his squeaking chair and propped his huge feet on his desk. “Tell me of what happened in Giruvegan. From the lay of your eyes, I measure all did not go well. Cid – was he false as I feared?”

“Yes,” Ashe said, “but we may have caught a glimpse of his true intent. We may now know what it is that Cid searches for.”

While Ashe told Reddas of what they had learned, some of the manse’s staff brought a meal for his guests. Daina, although exhausted, joined the others in eating the first solid food they’d had since reaching the Feywood. Ethers were all well and good to keep a body functioning, but she’d lost too much muscle weight on the journey. Had they wandered there any longer, she would have wasted away, become a corpse animated by the Mist’s illusory life.


	10. Interlude, part nine

Reddas took a long pull of his beer. “So the deifacted nethicite was only a fragment? And these occuria –” He made a sound like the swish of a wave on sand. “I know not, and care to know even less.”

“The way we see it, we have two choices,” Daina said. She laid down her napkin.

“If we strike this Sun-Cryst with the Sword of Kings, no new stone may be born,” Fran said, referring to the nethicite-destroyer they had procured in the Stilshrine of Miriam. “We say the Sun-Cryst is the source of all nethicite’s power. If we might break it, the Dusk Shard would be as a thing lifeless. As for the manufacted nethicite, who can say?”

“There is another way,” Balthier added. He seemed to have regained his fire after a good meal. “Use the Treaty-Blade to cut a new stone to fight the Dusk Shard and the manufacted stones.”

Reddas peered at him. “Would you like to know the best use of nethicite? Will or nil, I’ll tell you. You pick it up, and throw it away.”

An uncomfortable silence followed this assertion. Ashe, still clutching the Treaty-Blade, sat down next to Daina. Reddas took another swig of his beer, his dark gaze resting on the exiled princess.

“Either way, we gotta find this Sun-Cryst first, right?” Vaan asked reasonably. He’d managed to get his hands on one of Reddas’s green bottles, but Penelo had confiscated it before he’d taken more than a couple of sips. “Don’t we? Across the sea, in a tower on distant shore . . . Reddas?”

“Familiar words, Vaan.” The pirate king sat forward, slapping his bottle on his blotter. “I saw something of the sort in some documents I chanced upon during my visit to Draklor. The Naldoan Sea, the Ridorana Cataract, and the Pharos Lighthouse.” Reddas heaved a sigh. “I sent my fleet to fish out the truth behind these words, and caught trouble.”

“Then proof is ours,” Basch said, looking around at them all. “This lighthouse on the Naldoan Sea is the tower on the distant shore. The Mist that becalmed your ships is a grim, yet clear sign. The Sun-Cryst is there.”

“All well and good, but how do we get there? Those seas are in jagd, as I recall,” Balthier pointed out.

Reddas opened one of his desk drawers and produced what looked like Larsa’s manufacted nethicite, though the ruddy orange of a carnelian. He turned it in the light, palmed it, and said, “Try putting this one in your ship. ‘Tis a skystone made to resist jagd.”

He tossed it to Balthier.

“More spoils from the Draklor Labs, is it?” Balthier asked. He examined the stone suspiciously and then looked at Reddas from under his lashes. “Why not use it yourself?”

“That’s just the thing,” Reddas said. “My ship’s a Bhujerban model – it will not work. But should it fit the _Strahl,_ she’ll fly in jagd. Lady Ashe,” he said, abruptly turning to her. “I would accompany Your Highness if you do not object.”

“I am in your care,” the princess answered graciously. “But, tell me one thing: Why do so much for us?”

Reddas’s dark face hardened. “The Nabreus Deadlands.”

At that, Daina’s head shot up. “Nabudis . . . was your home?” she asked incredulously.

“Nay,” he said gently, “but a memory forever burned in my heart.”

* * *

Spirits low, Daina retired early to her room. She curled up on a padded bench below the wall of windows to watch the passing clouds. She sang softly to herself, unaware of Shemhazai’s crystal in her pocket and how it glowed.

* * *

They arrived, as expected, with twilight.

“Kupo! Sir Praeities, sir!”

Bertrand turned to meet the flyer, the last rays of the sun glancing off the moogle’s armor and his own.

The flyer came to a breathless landing and then knelt before his commander, his furry, upright ears not reaching Bertrand’s knees. “We have engaged in the Salikawood, kupo, sir,” he squeaked. “The line is holding steady.”

“Good lad,” Bertrand approved in a hearty voice. “What other news?”

“The Imperial fleet is hanging at the edge of the city. So far, the ships have not acted, kupo-po.”

The Nabradian knight looked toward Verdpale Palace. A faint shimmer from the highest tower denoted the magi at work inside. “No, nor will they bother while the paling is active. Our priority, then,” he went on, raising his voice so the troops standing in regiments behind him could hear, “is to keep the paling active. We have a long night ahead of us, but if all goes well, we can go home by dawn’s light. Archadia may set foot in our city, but they are mere visitors, who need to understand that we do not welcome them!”

The soldiers shouted their agreement as one. Bertrand clapped the flyer on the shoulder before he sent the little moogle on his way.

He was uneasy. Despite his assurance that the Imperial ships could do no damage to the palace and a large part of Nabudis while the paling was active, and despite that he and his men were guarding the city’s outer wall in an unbroken line, something felt wrong.

It was the civil war currently raging in Nabradia. Someone, either working independently or contracted by persons unknown, had provoked Rozarrian supporters in Nabudis into protests that had devolved into unsightly riots, giving Archadia a reason to intervene under the name of the Galtea Suppression Army. Three days running, Nabudis had been under siege. The constant harassment was wearing on them all.

For two hours, Bertrand and his men waited. The air grew cool and misty, the city hushed beneath its rooftops. Even though it had only been a few weeks since the royal wedding, Daina’s absence was felt by both he and his wife, Lizzy. It hurt him now, to be here, while Lizzy was home alone – although, he chuckled to himself, he would not have been able to keep his daughter home with her mother while Nabudis was under threat, anyway.

What were they doing now? Bertrand consoled himself with thoughts of his family: His wife, sleepless on this night as she told him she always was when he was on duty, perhaps sitting by the big picture window in the drawing room with a book, unheeded, in her lap. His daughter, proud and fierce, probably turning heads and setting tongues on the wag in Rabanastre with her Nabradian ways. Sending Daina to Dalmasca was the best thing he could have done for her. With an aging king at home and the union of the two young rulers abroad, he knew that to leave her here in Nabudis would have doomed her to insignificance.

The fighting, when it reached them, was desperate. Under a moonless sky, the two armies struggled and heaved like ocean waves around adamantine. No matter how hard they pressed, the Archadian soldiers proceeded no farther than the palisades. Cheering, Bertrand and his men began pushing the invaders back toward the Salikawood.

Then, like a mouse stealing along the baseboards for its hole, the night grew light. At first, Bertrand assumed dawn had finally come.

But the light, orange like a flame, emanated from the north.

A hush descended over the two armies. All eyes turned north, swords, crossbows, bows, and guns stilled – the fight, forgotten.

He could see the Imperial fleet now. The ships retreated, black bulks against the dark sky, their running lights blinking. Like a wayward star, the flame-like light drifted over the palace, and then it imploded. The paling, in blue and orange tongues of electricity, was sucked into the sudden blackness. From far below, deep in the palace itself, another light burst free to meet it. A tidal wave of hungry Mist blasted through the streets of Nabudis. In a flash, trees and flowering bushes withered. Paint vaporized. Buildings collapsed.

By the time the sound of the secondary explosion reached the outer wall, Bertrand and his men were dead, their corpses unrecognizable.

Morning illuminated a city of destruction. Bloated bodies of fish and frogs littered the bed of the evaporated lake. Sand-colored dust swirled through the air, curiously exploring the new, flattened landscape. Amid the rubble, moaning, gurgling noises arose, replacing the soft coos of the white doves.

* * *

A knock, so simple in its normalcy, woke Daina with a start. She’d fallen asleep at the window, her cheek imprinted with the plates of her glove. It was late afternoon in Balfonheim Port, hot and balmy.

The shades of cold, misty Nabudis hung in her eyes, dimming the sunlight.

Daina burst into tears.

* * *

She tried to stand, but her legs would not support her and instead dumped her on the floor in an avalanche of throw pillows.

Something sharp stabbed her in the hip.

“Ouch!” she cried. She frantically dug the offending object out of her pocket: A crystal red as a rose, crawling all over with Mist. The stone whispered at her. The shadows gained in strength.

“I told you to shut up!” Appalled, Daina hurled the ruby as far from her as she could and heard it smash something in the back room. “How could you show me that? You’re supposed to be asleep! You’re _horrible!”_

The door banged open. Daina had forgotten that someone had knocked, which was what had awakened her in the first place. Silence oozed out of the back room. It mocked her.

Horrible creature. Daina scrubbed her fists into her eyes. Composing her expression, she turned to face her visitor.

It was Basch, of course. A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled out, followed closely by the last of her tears. “Hello. Why are you here?”

“I heard shouting,” he said roughly, scanning the room, brows furrowed. “Are you all right?”

“No. Yes.” She took a deep breath, casting a glance at the back room. “It was just a – bad dream. Thought you’d come and rescue me?” She said it lightly, endeavoring to shake off the remnants of Shemhazai’s whispers.

“I would not presume,” he answered in the same tone. His not-quite-a-smile made an appearance, and he said more seriously, “I have learned that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”

“I think – I broke something just now,” she said in some confusion. She gestured at the back room. “Please, if you’ll excuse me –”

“Lady.” He bowed and moved for the door.

“No!” she cried.

He stopped, obviously surprised, and she sighed with her eyes closed.

“It can wait. Please, tell me why you came.”

“As you wish,” he said. “In two days, Nono says, the _Strahl_ will be ready for launch. Vaan, Penelo, and Her Highness have a trip to the market planned for the morrow if you would care to join us.”

“I see,” she murmured. The shadows had gone, leaving only the hot sunlight behind. With every second that passed, she felt better, more like herself. She picked up the kogarasumaru, which hung from its belt over the back of a chair, and tried to draw it. It stuck halfway out, and then came free with a jerk. She held it up, inspecting the warp in the blade, which had happened on the occuria’s platform. “Yes, I would like that. Thank you.”

“Then –” Again, he turned to go, grasping the doorknob.

“Basch.” She set the katana aside and walked up to him. Wrapped her fingers in the back of his red vest. Laid her forehead between his shoulder blades. “Stay.”

For long moments, neither moved except to breathe. Then Daina slipped between Basch and the door, barring the exit. The next morning they left the manse behind could be their last. Her parents had been taken in less than a heartbeat. What if he was, too? What if she was? How could she watch him walk away from her again?

“I should go,” he said in his low, rough voice.

She shivered. “Why?”

“I cannot stay, Lady. Your love is a battle that I cannot win.”

Battles, she understood. To have him so near was awakening her awareness of her body in a way she’d never experienced before. She brazenly reached into his space, snaking her arms around the back of his neck. “You can’t win every time.”

“Impossible girl!” He detached her arms and pushed her away, pinning her to the closed door. “I have already explained to you –”

“Tell me you don’t love me,” she said, head high, ignoring his bruising grip on her wrists. “Tell me that, and I’ll concede. Until you do, I will never cease.”

Both were breathing heavily. Daina waited. The grip on her wrists loosened. Became an embrace when Basch’s hands slipped down her arms to her shoulders. His amber eyes darkened in defeat, and she knew that she had finally won.

He kissed her with the same fire that had turned her world upside down so long ago in the Zertinan Caverns. Her awareness retracted, concentrated on the flame of his lips on hers. A thrill of delight ran through her when he pulled her closer. In spite of their various buckles, she pressed herself against him, reveling in the feel of his skin on hers. Her fingers wove into his hair, traced the scar in his left earlobe, and he undid the top belt of her coat. Sliding the collar out of the way, he kissed her mouth, then her jaw, and her throat.

“I love you,” he whispered against her skin.

“Then stay,” she whispered back.

The kisses resumed, slow and gentle. Basch’s callused hands ran over Daina’s belly, exploring the curve of waist and hip, before working at the second set of buckles, which kept the coat belted below her breasts.

She shrugged it off, and it pooled around her feet. She stepped out of it, heading for the back room, the esper’s crystal long forgotten. She looked over her shoulder. Held out her hand invitingly.

He took it, and she led him onward.

* * *

Once before, Daina had watched Basch sleep.

He lay on his side, his arm folded beneath his cheek, his unruly hair a spray of wheat on the damask pillowcase. She smiled to herself. With such a wealth of gold in her bed, no one could blame her for touching. The tanned skin of his chest and stomach was smooth and hard with muscle. Since his release from the oubliette, he’d grown into himself, no longer the thin shadow of a man she’d first met. The phoenix pendant was twisted, the chain tight against his throat. She gently straightened it out, running her thumb over its stylized wings.

She looked up from her inspection to find him watching her. So still, so quiet, she hadn’t realized he was awake. He propped himself on an elbow and kissed her.

It felt so good, so peaceful, but there was something she had to say. Basch’s unhappiness, lurking just under the surface, was painfully clear to her.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“Aye.”

“Do you love Noah?”

His eyes searched her face. “Aye,” he answered again, wary now.

“Basch.” She brushed her fingertips along his bearded chin. “Part of what it means to love is that it isn’t exclusive. Let me in. Together, we can see this through.”

He breathed a laugh, pulling her to the sheets. “I’m beginning to think that I have been blind all my life, for you to see so clearly what I cannot.”

The humor must have been a panic response. He buried his face in her hair. She could feel him trembling.

All she could do was hold him.

* * *

The shopkeeper, Beruny, dug his tape measure out of an overflowing junk drawer. “I’m afraid your katana won’t be repaired in time for your departure. However, I can offer you a discount on any blade in the store.”

Daina sighed. She liked the kogarasumaru. “Thank you.”

Elza, one of Reddas’s men, had escorted them to the marketplace. She crossed her arms under her ample bosom, her red lips fixed in a pout. “Ridorana . . .” she murmured.

“Something ails you?” Basch asked her. Every so often, he would look at Daina, and such a look it was that she found it beyond difficult to hold still while Beruny took her measurements.

“The great Pharos and the bottomless Cataract,” Elza said in a stronger tone, tossing her riotous hair over her red velvet shoulder. She frowned. “No man of Balfonheim would willingly go there, so oft are we warned as children. But Reddas is no man of Balfonheim. There were many against this expedition, but he . . . He knew no fear.”

Beruny kept his gaze fixed on his tape measure, as if uncomfortable with Elza’s subject. Their gloom mirrored the rain pattering against the cobblestones beyond the shop door. A storm had moved in over Cerobi Steppe. The migrating elementals, Elza’s partner Rikken had said matter-of-factly, were to blame for the change in weather.

“We cannot afford to capitulate to fear,” Ashe said, so pensively that not even the fiery Elza came up with a retort.

While Vaan and Penelo discussed the differing magickal properties of the measures and scales in the display case, Daina tested three katanas. She chose the yakei, favoring its clean lines and wyrmhide grip over the ame-no-murakumo with its added wind effect or the kiku-ichimonji, which was slightly too large for her. Once again, the green tassel relocated to her new sword’s hilt. When she buckled the poisonous yakei around her hips and felt its balanced weight, she smiled, reminded of the lost kotetsu. Their troubles in the Garamsythe Waterway seemed but a candle to the sun compared to everything they had gone through since then.

The others stepped into the rain while Daina paid for the yakei. Beruny seemed glad to see the back of them, as if their very presence would bring disaster simply because they were not of Balfonheim and, with Reddas, were planning to break into the taboo tower.

When Daina turned to go, 12500g lighter but happier for it, a hand closed around hers. She smiled, looking up at Basch. “I had no idea people living in a free town could be so superstitious,” she said in an undertone.

“Why not?” Ever courteous, Basch stepped aside for an entering customer. Daina laid her head on his shoulder, picking up the subtle hint of his shaving soap. “Sailors push the boundaries of the world and often die for it. We know the Sun-Cryst is in the Pharos Lighthouse. How can sailors – nay, even pirates – hope to contend with that much Mist?”

“But then there are people like Vaan. He has no fear,” she said, and he laughed as he held the door open for her.

“It is because he is not alone,” he said into her ear, making her shiver.

Outside, Ashe was a blurry shape in the downpour, her arms over her head and her white shirttails flying out behind her as she ran. She wasn’t the only one. The entire Gallerina Marketplace emptied as hume, seeq, bangaa, and moogle bolted for cover. Within seconds, Basch and Daina were stranded in the veil of gray.

“We’re going to the Whitecap!” Vaan yelled. “Hurry it up, or you’re gonna get soaked!”

Daina didn’t like the water driving in her face. She would have run after them, but Basch, as reckless as someone much younger, grabbed her and kissed her. She was so happy she thought she might fly to pieces. She clung to him, demanding more. Basch grinned, seeming pleased with himself. Then, still grinning, he towed her along the wharf. When they reached the steamy haven of the pub he let her go, his amber eyes afire.

She tried to catch her breath as he shook the rain out of his hair. Unless they wanted to give the barmaid a thrill, she sternly told herself, it was better to keep a respectable distance. Holding in laughter borne of sheer giddiness, she joined her friends, all of whom were dripping onto the floorboards.

“What’s with you?” Vaan wanted to know, scooting his chair closer to the table.

Penelo took one look at Daina’s flushed face and bright eyes, put two and two together, went pink in the cheeks, and stuck up her menu to hide her face. Daina could see her shoulders shaking with giggles. Daina busied herself with squeezing the rain out of her braid.

“Penelo?” Vaan tried to take her menu. “Are you okay?”

“Fine!” Penelo squeaked. “Get your own!”

“I’m hungry,” Daina announced. “Elza, what’s good here?”

* * *

Across the endlessly blue, choppy sea. The farther Balthier flew, the more agitated the sea became until it reached what looked like the edge of the world. Nothing but empty space yawned for miles beyond. Even above the hum of the glossair engines, Daina could hear the rush and roar of the water plunging over the truncated seabed like spilled wine off a table. Great plumes of mist sparkled in the sun, silver and gold. Rainbows frolicked in the ever-changing waterfalls like jeweled birds. She, Vaan, and Penelo wedged themselves into one seat, all three gaping through the portal in awe.

Pharos Lighthouse perched on the lip of rock and water in defiance of gravity, another stunning example of whimsical Galtean-era architecture. The sea flowed through its foundations, and the lighthouse spat its own waterfalls over the cataract’s edge. It wasn’t actually a single tower but a collection of many, built upon one another in a complicated balancing act. Spires of brown and gray stone rose above the sea, jagged and forbidding. It was a fortress, the greatest one that ever stood.

Balthier landed the _Strahl_ in the ruins of a city that could only be seen from the air, about a mile from the Pharos itself. The constant roar of the ocean thrummed in Daina’s ears when she debarked and waited for Nono to secure the _Strahl’s_ anchor.

“A tower on distant shore,” Fran said, shaking her ponytail over her shoulder. It was like a mantra for them. Here, their journey was coming to an end as surely as the land had. Fran directed her gaze upward to the shrouded bulk of the lighthouse. “And about its peak, a piercing Mist.”

“And in that Mist, the Sun-Cryst waits,” Ashe said, clasping her hands.

“My lady,” Reddas rumbled. “Your words still sound of doubt. Pray you reach your answer, ere we the Sun-Cryst.”

“And?” She turned to him, combing her bangs to the side. “Should I choose revenge, what then?”

Reddas began the gentle uphill climb to the tower. “Then your woe shall be your own.”

As a group, they followed the dark sky pirate into the crumbling streets.

It was evident no one had set foot in the city in ages. In true pirate fashion, several members of their party looted precious artifacts from the ruins. Daina, however, accidentally triggered a series of invisible traps that almost killed her and Reddas, who was walking close by her. The deafening sound of the explosions echoed through the city.

Lured by the noise, several deathclaws, a variety of mantis encased in a brown, shell-like husk, descended on them. They keened in hunger, their sickle forelimbs hard as stone. Their vestigial anterior wings, having lost most of their flight membranes, rattled like the last breaths of the dying.

The deathclaws weren’t the only things waiting to be awakened. When Vaan, always in front, ascended the final steps to the lighthouse, a salty breeze played through the courtyard. It breathed up a small dust storm and ran ravaging fingers over the decaying mound lying partway up the steps. Daina watched beige swirls lift off the mound, and then she saw the glint of bone: Elongated phalanges, the remnants of wings, and the long, tooth-filled snout of the skull.

The mound moved.

“Whoa!” Vaan yelled, tripping backward down five stairs as the wyrm corpse snapped its jaws shut where his face had been.

The wyrm shuddered. Its skeletal form reared upright. It roared with the sound of wind whistling through a cavern. Joints and tendons crackled like dry wood. Its eyes had long since decayed, but it inhaled mightily through a desiccated sinus cavity and snarled.

“It’s already dead!” Penelo exclaimed, backing away. “How can it be moving like that?”

“It’s the Mist,” Daina said, drawing the yakei. “This guardian probably doesn’t know it has died.”

The wyrm advanced, using its ruined wings and hind feet to slither after its prey. In desperation, Vaan kicked at the beast. His shoe sank right through the toughened leather of its hide. He shouted for help, desperately hacking at the wyrm with his lohengrin to free his foot.

The twang of a bowstring. A fiery arc. Fran’s arrow found its mark and magickal flame greedily began consuming what was left of the wyrm’s body. With an almighty wrench that ripped a rib through hide, Vaan scrambled away.

Totally disregarding the magicked arrow and the gaping hole in its chest, the wyrm stomped into their midst, hitting hard and fast. Fran dropped with a cry of pain. Ashe wasn’t doing much better, but Balthier was there by her side, determinedly drawing the wyrm away from her. Daina rushed in to help them. The wyrm’s rock-hard head slammed into her and punched her aside. She slid the full length of the courtyard before she could recover, wheezing.

“Look out!” Penelo screamed.

Her warning came too late. The wyrm unleashed a blast of Mist that felled Reddas, Ashe, Balthier, Fran, and Vaan in a single instant. They lay dazed, their faces twisted in terror.

“Lady Ashe! Ashe! Can you hear me?” Daina choked, running to her friends. The wyrm must have smelled her coming and attacked. She frantically slashed and parried, but no matter how deeply the yakei cut, the wyrm did not seem to feel it. Her blade’s poisoned edge made no difference, either, for there was no blood infect, no beating heart to spread atrophy to the brain. She couldn’t kill this beast alone. It was too fast and too strong.

Then Penelo danced in, her zwill crossblade flashing in her small hands. The two girls harried the monster, one on each side. They kept it busy until Basch was able to break its neck while its attention was elsewhere.

The head flopped grotesquely sideways and dragged along the ground, jaws working, while the body continued to rampage, though blindly, without coordination. After that, Basch sliced the creature apart and left its remains where the wind could scour its bones clean.

Not sparing the twice-dead wyrm a second thought, Daina dropped to her knees and pulled Ashe into her lap. Ashe did not respond, her face frozen in a silent scream.

“What’s wrong with her?” Daina gasped.

“Fearga, I think. Try a remedy,” Penelo suggested shakily. “I don’t have any spells that can help that.”

Tenderly, they administered remedies to their friends. One by one, they regained their senses and the color returned to their faces.

Gun-shy, Vaan looked dubiously up the steps. Ashe led the way. Still a little disoriented, she stumbled, but Balthier caught her hand and steadied her.

She did not immediately take her hand back.

Daina watched the shadows and sorrow of the past weigh down them both. Balthier handed Ashe up the steps and then slid smoothly aside, his eyes on the ground. Ashe’s gaze lingered a little longer, but then she sighed and seemed to put Balthier aside. She studied the door to the Pharos, a golden construction large enough for an esper to pass through.

“Hey, Fran,” Vaan called when a plaque at the top of the stairs snagged his eye. “Something’s written on the wall. I can’t read it.”

Fran joined him, her long ears perked. “Engraved by someone, it seems,” she said. “It’s quite old. ‘Lo, seeker in days unborn, god-blade bearer. Know you: This tower challenges the sky. ‘Ware the Watcher; the ward of the Three waits, soul hungry, unsated. He without power, want it not. He with power, trust it not. He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion, cut the true path. In blood, Raithwall.’ ”

“The Dynast-King?” Ashe exclaimed.

Fran laughed. “Does it startle you? He took his sword from the occuria. It was here he claimed the nethicite. He must have known he was not the last the occuria would choose. He left this for you.” She approached Ashe slowly. “ ‘Rend illusion, cut the true path.’ Words of much mystery. Yet his blood runs in your veins. Perhaps it whispers to you the truth?”

Ashe sighed again. Like a schoolgirl tackling an unwelcome assignment, she marched up to the door.

Hidden gears started up, rumbling and groaning, and a flash of blue light split the door. Then, like the pistons in an enormous engine, the X-shaped plates of the door began to spin, revealing how deep the entrance actually ran; each plate was more than a foot thick. The plates turned, steadily opening until four flat notches in them formed a bridge at Ashe’s feet. She stepped gracefully forward.

Inside the structure, all was pale blue. Azure stones and bricks, cornflower light. The sound of waterfalls was louder here. When Daina saw the immense column of blue-white Mist and seawater swirling upward in the chamber’s center, she gasped.

Balthier and Basch picked their way across the rubble-strewn floor. Like the city, the Pharos was a ruin.

“The Sun-Cryst should be at the top of the tower,” Basch said, tilting his head back to study the impossible rise of water.

“It looks like someone’s holding our lift on another floor,” Balthier pointed out, examining a pair of waist-high gates that led directly into the Misty column.

“Then we find another way. Come,” Reddas said. He marched to the right, curving along with the column until he found a door labeled “Threshold of Night.”

* * *

Reddas put his large hands against the door and pushed. Whatever Daina had expected, whether Raithwall’s “watcher” or perhaps a treasury full of fabulous riches, it was neither. The room was ten feet long, eight feet wide, and completely empty, like a vault long since pillaged by thieves. Disappointed, she turned to go.

“Where is Vaan?” Penelo asked suddenly.

Startled, Daina scanned the faces in their group. Vaan was indeed missing, as was Fran. Although they searched every inch of the wellspring, they could uncover no trace of their missing comrades. They found nothing except rubble, the upward-flowing swirl of Mist and water, and a single way stone device.

“What do we do?” Ashe murmured.

Daina stepped up to the way stone. “We go on. Either we meet them along the way, or we don’t. No matter what, my lady, we must get you to the Sun-Cryst. Vaan and Fran know that.”

“Yes, of course. You’re right.” Ashe laid her hand on the device.

When they came out the other side of its magicks, they had ascended ten full stories. The Pharos’s interior flared wide, flying buttresses bracing the crumbling stone staircases that led upward in a square-edged spiral around the Mist-water column. Here, above the tides of the sea, where the arched windows opened to nothing but the sky, a strange set of beasts had made their home. Chimera brains, their fat cockatrice bodies topped by wicked, humanoid faces with pointed ears, rolled around the landings as if deep in thought. Eerie, blue-white mistmares patrolled the interior corridors, their ghostly hooves making no sound. Flying aeronite wyverns harassed the humes from above. Once, Balthier discovered a mimeo disguised as a treasure coffer. The incident brought the mimic queen of Barheim Passage to mind. After that, no one had any taste for looting.

Brainpans, the ugly, two-faced statues that strove to bite their legs off if they passed too near, were the most interesting. Each time one was slain, its green flame expired and a chime rang sweetly through the Pharos. At the bottom of the stairs that led from the tenth floor to the eleventh, they saw why: A gap had been filled by glowing green blocks.

A carven pillar bore ancient letters that hung in an effulgent glow: “You who crawl upon the clay, yet yearn for Heaven’s path, made by Our will. Tongue of stone’s green flame your way bespeaks. When stone-face lit by green flame falls, then flame returns to stone; the path is clear.” Remembering Vaan’s successful gamble inside Giruvegan, Daina strode boldly onto the blocks, which blazed once and then solidified to ordinary stone beneath her boots. She tossed a crooked grin over her shoulder. This place wasn’t so hard to understand, after all.

They repeated the process five more times, hunting out brainpans to complete bridges on the fourteenth floor, the twenty-fifth, the thirty-first, the thirty-fifth, and the forty-seventh. By the time they reached the forty-ninth floor, the sea was a distant memory.

“How high does this place go?” Penelo marveled.

Reddas paused in front of an ancient door on which an old, nearly indecipherable inscription warned of the second Watcher.

“Are you prepared, m’lady?” he asked Ashe. “We may be separated.”

“I am ready,” she answered clearly.

Reddas pushed open the door.

Daina expected a repeat of the Threshold of Night. She followed Reddas through as calmly as if she were entering another empty vault.

She walked into a rusty green marsh beneath a brick-red sky, heading for a waterfall and a stagnant pool resting at its foot. Reddas kept striding ahead as if he had noticed nothing. Daina’s surprise quickly changed to anger.

“Abyssal Celebrant!” she snarled. “Where are we?”

“Ah, Praeities, you I expected,” Reddas said, sounding highly amused, and then jogged back to her. “But you, I did not.”

Daina turned around. There was Penelo, looking half surprised, half rueful.

“I didn’t want to be left behind,” she said sheepishly.

“What do you mean, you expected me?” Daina demanded of the pirate king.

“I have a theory,” he said cheerfully. “These Watchers are meant to protect the Sun-Cryst from intruders, but the occuria have extended an invitation to their so-called chosen one.”

“Ashe isn’t here,” said Penelo.

“Nay and I will tell you why. Vaan is always at the helm, ready to fly down trouble’s throat.” Reddas held up a finger, and then a second. “The viera was also ready to fight. This place breathed evil to her, to my eye. Thus, they were taken at the first watch.”

“I get it,” Daina said, relaxing. “This time, you augured I, as well as yourself, would be taken, for my guard was up, and I had put myself before Ashe.”

“That is the gist of it,” he agreed.

“So what now?” Penelo cast a wary look around. “What is a Watcher, anyway?”

“Only one way to find out.” Yakei in hand, Daina neared the pool.

Everything about it was wrong. It was a painting, a representation of a waterfall-filled pool done by one who had never seen such things. The waterfall should have sent the pool frothing. Its green surface remained serene and unmarred by any ripple until a monster of a fish burst out of it and tried to take a bite out of her.

The fish’s bloated, cancerous body had the face of a mutant crocodile. It plied the humid air as if it were water. Yakei and fang clashed. Reddas, with a battle yell, came flying in like a riever. The fish’s scales, warped and thickened, repelled their blades. Despite its malformed shape, the agile fish twisted and curled out of their reach. Daina jumped back and cast one of her basic spells. A small tongue of flame licked at the fish’s sharp fins. It recoiled, thrashing, although the spell had been too weak to do any real damage.

“I have an idea!” Penelo cried. “Keep it busy!”

Reddas had not needed encouragement. Berserk, he pounded on the beast, taking hits and ignoring them.

It took three tries, but Penelo finally managed to cast a complex spell that coated the fish in black oil. Then, with more magick skill than Daina could master, she sent repeated bursts of firaga at the monster. The black oil combusted. The fish, convulsing, died amidst the flames. The marsh dissolved around them, the air rippling like the pool’s surface should have.

“You did it!” Daina crowed.

Penelo laughed, pirouetting gleefully on her toes. The Watcher’s magick deposited them elsewhere in the Pharos. Higher in the tower, Daina guessed. The spray from the Mist-water column struck her skin like ice.

“There’s the lift,” Penelo said, and then gasped. “Vaan!”

“What took you so long?” he asked.

* * *

“Where are we?” Daina asked Fran, joining her on the lift.

“The eighty-eighth floor,” the viera answered, pointing to a small dial. According to the dial, there were one hundred floors in the tower. “We are close.”

“It was a rocktoise,” Vaan was telling Penelo, too exultant to pay attention to their predicament, “and when we defeated it, we ended up here.”

Reddas pounded his fist into the unresponsive lift. “Blast! We are stranded, and can neither move up nor down.”

“It’s best if we stay here,” Daina said. She angled the yakei so that she could sit cross-legged on the cold stone floor. “We have neither the Treaty-Blade nor the Sword of Kings, for Lady Ashe carries one and Captain Ronsenburg has the other. There is one more Watcher. They will face it and be brought here, just as we have.”

Moreover, Basch and Balthier were still with the princess. Daina did not fear for her. Not with such companions at her side. She looked up at the dark-skinned sky pirate, who seemed as well-bred as Balthier.

He had proven himself a friend but was wrapped in a mystery she had yet to unravel. One thing, in particular, had bothered her on and off for several days – what he had said of Nabudis. What did this big, violent, soft-hearted Archadian man know of her home’s demise?

Hesitantly, she asked, “Reddas, what is Nabudis to you?”

But he did not answer.

* * *

Ashe and the men arrived two hours later, just as Daina was about to start screaming to relieve the ennui. The princess’s face was a mixture of surprise and battle lust. She collected herself quickly, however. Her touch brought life to the lift.

Causing no small amount of frustration, on the ninetieth floor, the lift juddered and lurched to a stop. They milled about, wondering what their next move should be.

The maelstrom of Mist and seawater next to them glowed dark gold. A creature with the bare torso of a hume, the furred legs of a goat, and the snarling face of a lion slammed onto the lift. Vaan rescued Penelo before she went overboard. The esper grinned at them, red lips skinning back from pointed teeth. He had a long beard and mane of purest white and wore a golden, horned helm. When he roared, quake magick rocked the platform.

Fran had a response to that. She and Penelo hurriedly cast float spells. A disc of thickened air raised Daina’s boots from the lift. It threw her balance as though she stood upon on water that heaved under her feet, but the esper’s continued quakeja spells gnashed harmlessly beneath her. The fighters took him down quickly.

Fittingly, Basch gleaned the Bringer of Order’s name. He shouted it over the sound of the straining lift. “Hashmal!”

The lion’s face roared, but Hashmal did surrender, sleep overtaking him as he vanished into his crystal.

Basch studied the topaz in his palm, holding silent communion with Hashmal much like Ashe with Belias, Vaan with Mateus, or Daina with Shemhazai. It was a strange feeling, becoming a summoner. To Daina, it was as if her mind had enlarged by an extra room, becoming home to a presence that never quite slept. After a moment, Basch shook himself out of his reverie, and put the crystal away.

The float spells dissipated. Daina breathed a sigh of relief when her boots came to rest on solid flooring. Ashe touched the cracked dial. Nothing happened.

“It looks like we walk from here,” Balthier said in disgust.

“I’ll be happy if I never see another staircase again,” Vaan said. Wearily, they began to climb.

* * *

“The din of the Mist grows greater,” Fran suddenly said when they rounded the landing on the ninety-seventh floor.

“The Sun-Cryst must be near,” Basch said.

Walking by his side, Daina looked up at him, but he gazed at Ashe, who was leading them.

“I wonder if she’ll really do it, take revenge against the Empire,” Penelo murmured, coming up beside them. Her honey eyes were soft. “I mean, I know how she must feel. It’s hard losing someone you care about.”

“Something we all got in common,” Vaan said with a sigh.

“But, you know, no matter how hard we try, we can’t change the past,” Penelo said. “There’s nothing that can bring them back.”

Daina, feeling the truth in her heart, took Basch’s hand. He looked at her and returned the pressure of her fingers.

“Still, sometimes,” Penelo went on, “when I close my eyes, I can see them so clearly.”

“Illusions of the past,” Reddas said gruffly. “You think to have cast them off, only to find them years later, unwearying, unrelenting. The past can bind a man as surely as irons.”

Hand in hand, Daina and Basch watched the princess walk toward her destiny, her shoulders tight and her head low. The Treaty-Blade, strapped to her back, dwarfed her slender body.

“Cut the true path,” Reddas mused. “But will she?”

“She will do what she must,” Daina said. “As we all must.”

She started forward, and Basch’s fingers slipped from hers.

* * *

At the top of the Pharos, a brilliant white light laced with tendrils of blue and pink burned like a trapped star, turning the daytime sky outside to midnight blue. Ashe relieved Basch of the Sword of Kings. Its canvas wrap fluttered to the stone floor.

“So this is the Sun-Cryst,” said Reddas.

Daina squinted against the glare through watery eyes. She could not actually see the Cryst. Only the light, searing her retinas. It resembled a cobweb of thick strands, the Cryst an incandescent egg sac at its center.

Alone, Ashe stepped toward the luminescent stone, an occurian greatsword in each hand. She lifted the Treaty-Blade. “King Raithwall stood here. With this sword, he cut the Sun-Cryst, and took its power in his hand.”

“But you’re going to use the Sword of Kings to destroy the Sun-Cryst,” Vaan said somberly, separating from Penelo to stand just behind her. “Aren’t you, Ashe.”

Ashe breathed a laugh. “Don’t interrupt me, Vaan.”

She lifted the Sword of Kings then, the nethicite-destroyer, and the blade lit up from within with the Mist’s peculiar eldritch light. From outside the Pharos, a thick bolt of lightning struck the churning sea. Its instantaneous boom hurt Daina’s ears. Howling wind whipped the waves one hundred stories below into froth. About the lighthouse’s peak, ugly black clouds gathered. As if unaware of this phenomenon, Ashe took a deep breath and let it out in a tranquil sigh.

The Sun-Cryst’s radiance died. Ashe was not the only one standing in front of it.

_“Lord Rasler?”_ Basch choked.

Daina covered her mouth with her hands but could not stop the tears that instantly welled up and spilled over. It was King Rasler, or something ghostly that looked just like him, wearing his armor, cape, and sword, his face terribly sad. The apparition had eyes only for Ashe.

“Why has he not moved on?” Daina whispered. A more horrible afterlife, doomed to haunt his young widow forever, she could not imagine. “Has he been trapped here all along?”

“You want revenge,” Ashe said to her dead husband, loud in her disbelief, as if continuing a conversation that had been going on for some time. “You would have me use the stone?”

Rasler held out his hand, palm up. Daina did not hear him speak, but Ashe seemed to.

“You would have me destroy the Empire?” she yelled. “Is this my duty? Is this what you want?” Her voice broke in anguish. “I cannot.”

Rasler gazed sadly at her.

The next words heard did not come from him, or any of their number.

“Why do you hesitate?”

The muffled, metallic voice rang through the Pharos. Startled, everyone turned around. From behind one of the broken walls, Judge Gabranth appeared, a sword in each hand. He must have entered the tower behind them and made his way to the top in their wake. Behind him, the lift waited, apparently repaired enough to have brought him this far. The raging wind snatched at his black cape. “Take what is yours. The Cryst is a blade. It was meant for you. Wield it! Avenge your father!”

Ashe gasped. So did Daina.

“Yes,” Gabranth said, advancing in a swagger. “It was I who wore Basch’s face – who cut down the life of Dalmasca. Lady Ashe! Your father’s murderer is here!”

_“You?”_ Ashe snarled.

“And Reks!” Vaan snapped at the same time. He stepped protectively in front of Ashe.

Basch, however, had gone deathly still.

Every movement betraying his confidence, Gabranth put the interlocking pommels of his swords together, forming a double-bladed weapon. “I slew your king,” he told Ashe. Boasting. Gloating. “I slew your country. Do these deeds not demand vengeance?”

Furious, Ashe dropped the decorative Sword of Kings and brought the heftier Treaty-Blade to bear.

Gabranth laughed. “Yes. Good! Find your wrath! Take up your sword! Fight and serve those who died before you!”

He ran at Vaan, swinging his weapon around to cut the boy in two, but Reddas and his scimitars got in the way. The dark sky pirate easily held the leaner Gabranth at bay, just as he had Basch. Gabranth grunted.

“A judge magister there was,” Reddas said pleasantly. “Two years past, he took the Midlight Shard, stolen from Nabradia, and used it not knowing what he did, and Nabudis was blown away. Cid ordered this of him to learn the nethicite’s true power. He swore such power would not be used again. He forsook his judicer’s plate and his name.”

Reddas stepped back, brandishing his swords.

“Judge Zecht!” said Gabranth. In realization. In greeting.

Daina was thunderstruck. Reddas, who was so kind to Lady Ashe, so good for the people of Balfonheim Port – _Reddas_ had killed her parents and destroyed her home? For nothing more than to satisfy a mad akademician’s curiosity?

“It’s been too long, Gabranth,” Reddas said, sounding, as always, highly amused. Over his shoulder, he added, “Reach out your hand, Lady Ashe. But that which you must grasp is beyond revenge, something greater than despair. Something beyond our reach.” He shook his bald head. “Try as we might, Gabranth, history’s chains bind us too tightly.”

He attacked. This time, the other judge was ready for him. Gabranth, as skilled as his brother, parried the pirate’s blows and sent the larger man over backward. Reddas’s scimitars skipped away.

“No, we cannot escape the past,” Gabranth sneered. He pointed an accusing finger at Reddas. “This man is living proof! What is your past, Daughter of Dalmasca? Did you not swear revenge? Do the dead not demand it?”

Ashe bowed her head, and then she turned beseeching eyes on Rasler’s ghost. Vaan, however, picked up one of Reddas’s dropped scimitars, his young face dark with hatred as he bared his teeth at Gabranth.

At the sound of blade scraping stone, Ashe looked at Vaan. Their eyes met. Daina watched as the most extraordinary conversation took place. Neither one spoke. Not with words. They didn’t need to. The fury bled out of each of them, as did their personas, street orphan and ex-princess. They were simply two scared teenagers, Vaan and Ashe, adrift in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Rasler’s shade silently stretched out his arms, yearning toward life.

“Rasler,” Ashe breathed, fixing her gaze on the floor. “My prince. Our time was short. Yet I know this: You were not the kind to take base _revenge!”_

With the last word, she swung the Treaty-Blade through the apparition. Rasler staggered back in shock, bleeding blue light.

“The Rasler I knew is gone,” Ashe said bitterly.

Rasler opened his mouth. He spoke – and it was with the dual tones of an occurian. “You are our saint, Ashelia B’nargin. You must be the one to straighten hist’ry’s weave!”

She didn’t let him finish. She cut through him again, her elegant features screwed up in agony. “I am no false saint for you to use!” she shouted.

“Ashe,” Vaan said softly.

Rasler’s apparition dissipated and was no more. The tip of the Treaty-Blade struck the floor.

Ashe’s voice lost its backbone. “In all Dalmasca’s long history,” she said to the floor, “not once did we rely on the Dusk Shard. Our people resolved never to use it, though their need might be dire. That was the Dalmasca I wanted back.” The sword sagged further in her grip, and then she dropped it as if it was a piece of trash. Sadly, she said, “To use the stone now would be to betray that.”

She turned around, every inch Dalmasca’s ruler. “I will destroy the Sun-Cryst! I will discard the stone!”

“You claim no need of power?” Gabranth challenged. “What of your broken kingdom’s shame? The dead demand justice!”

“You’re wrong,” Vaan told him flatly.

Gabranth seemed to acknowledge Vaan for the first time; his helm jerked in Vaan’s direction.

“What would change?” Vaan asked, throwing out his free hand angrily. “I can’t help my brother now. My brother’s gone. He’s dead!”

“There is no place in this future for those who have already passed,” Daina murmured, but she wasn’t sure to whom in the tower she was speaking. “They would not want it and would curse us for trapping them in time.”

“Even with power, we cannot change what has passed. What is done, is done,” Ashe said. She offered the blackened Dawn Shard to Gabranth and then let it fall from her hand. More trash, to be thrown away.

The stone wobbled to a stop at Gabranth’s feet. Unmoving, he stared down at it in livid silence.

* * *

He, however, was not yet finished. After a moment, he seemed to gather his thoughts together for a new assault. Like Basch, he spoke well and with conviction.

“Yet without power, what future can you claim?” he asked Ashe. “What good a kingdom you cannot defend?”

“Then I will defend queen and kingdom both!” Basch said, stepping forward. He’d been silent for so long that Daina wondered if Gabranth had seen him. Behind him, the storm howled and lightning flashed.

“Hah!” Gabranth cried after a stunned moment. Every movement quick, as if he’d practiced this exact scene a thousand times over, he separated his swords. “Defend? You? You who failed Landis and Dalmasca? What can shame hope to keep safe? Your shield is shattered! Your oaths poison those you would protect!”

At first, everyone stood back as the brothers engaged. They were evenly matched, Basch slightly faster without the weight of Gabranth’s judicer’s plate, but also more vulnerable.

“Hear me, Basch!” Gabranth yelled. “Do not think killing the kingslayer will win you back your honor! When you abandoned home and kin, your name was forever stained with blood!”

Basch’s eyebrows lowered. “Aye. This stain is mine to bear. But I will bear it willingly, knowing that I did all that I could, for hope!”

“Preen and strut as you like,” Gabranth returned in a voice that was like, and not like, his elder brother’s. “In the end, we are the same! Blood-thirsting carrion birds, hell-bent on revenge!”

Gabranth had used the time taken for slinging insults to his advantage. He released his spell, and the cyclone cuts sliced toward the unprepared Basch. He managed to block some of the attacks, but not all, and it left his guard wide open.

Daina was already moving. So was Vaan. They shot between the brothers, the yakei arcing up in a silver sweep. Daina braced her feet and flung Gabranth back. The yakei returned to guard before he recovered. He retreated, circling the teens warily.

“Are you all right?” Vaan asked.

“Aye,” said Basch.

“Then, please, finish it,” Daina said, her gaze flicking from Gabranth to Basch. “It’s not right to let this continue.”

Judge Gabranth, however, was not so obliging. Obviously infuriated by their interference, he singled Daina out and went on the offensive. He meant to kill her, she knew. The only things that saved her were her superior speed, both of foot and of blade, and the fact that Basch fought for her as much as for himself. Vaan’s skill had improved significantly, as well. Between the three of them, they forced Gabranth back.

Panting, Gabranth caged himself in with his swords – he refused to surrender and was obviously preparing to resume the fight. “So you, too, would leave your debts unpaid?” he asked his brother sourly.

From behind Gabranth, Dr. Cid appeared as if by magick. He spryly jumped down from a window ledge.

“Enough of this! I can bear no more!” he called, sounding like a jaded critic at the theater. He strolled forward and picked up the discarded Dawn Shard, turning it in his hand, examining it like a jeweler appraising a diamond. “You disappoint me, Gabranth. He trusted you.”

Vaan exchanged a glance with Daina. Weren’t the akademician and the judge allies? Who had trusted Gabranth? More confused than ever, Daina did not relax her stance.

Insolently, Cid pushed one of Gabranth’s sword arms down, and the wounded judge staggered, almost fell. Cid went on talking to the stone. “When you bared steel against the princess, you foreswore your obligations to your emperor! You shame yourself and make mockery of Lord Larsa’s trust. You are unfit to serve him as sword or shield.” He smiled, spectacles winking in the Cryst’s light. “And so I release you from that service. Your presence is neither required nor welcome.”

Despite his full armor, the helm that hid his face from view, Daina could tell that Gabranth was incensed. He started to shake, his gloved hands tightening on his swords. He raised one and lunged forward with a snarl, aiming to strike Cid down from behind.

“Gabranth!” Basch warned sharply.

Venat appeared where Cid had been, and Gabranth’s blade swiped harmlessly through the occurian’s incorporeal form. Gabranth looked to his left, and there was the real Cid, grinning like a kid who had just won a game of Tag. With a liquid burst of Mist, Venat sent the judge flying backward. Gabranth crashed into a pillar and crumpled to the floor. There he slumped, unmoving.

Basch’s breath caught, but he made no move to help his brother.

“You were only a tool of this Venat,” Balthier said to his father.

“How quaint.” Cid smirked, and the imposing white form of Venat crystallized at his shoulder. “We are allies! The occuria give men power as a master feeds his dog: It is meant to tame us. How well you’ve resisted their wile,” he approved, redirecting his smirk to Ashe. “By turning your back on their stones, you give us free hand to write our own history.”

“And at what price?” she parried. “Dalmasca’s freedom for your nethicite? I shall not suffer you to have it. The Sun-Cryst be damned!”

Cid shifted space again. One moment, he was facing Ashe, and the next, he had gotten between her and the Cryst.

“Oh, be sure that it is!” He laughed. “For what other purpose do you think you’ve brought us here? But stay your occurian sword! The Sun-Cryst is glutted with Mist, too precious a thing to waste! Let us use the stone! Finish this, Venat!”

He hurled the pale blue Dawn Shard into the air, and Venat liquidly followed it. The stone glowed, calling to it the orange Dusk Shard and the indigo Midlight Shard. The three nethicite stones formed a triangle in the air. Like a quickening chain, they sucked vast quantities of burning Mist between them. They combined, prismatic, and became a white-hot star. A backward-rolling wave of power nearly pulled everyone flat. Daina lurched and landed on one knee, her braid whipping forward.

Cid burst into delighted laughter. “Shards of nethicite! Cocoon of the Sun-Cryst! Spill forth your Mist upon this Ivalice! Let sea and sky be awash in it, that Bahamut may come and drink his fill!”

As if his shouts were a spell, the shards rejoined with the Sun-Cryst. So much white Mist blew outward that everyone except Cid struggled to remain standing against its gale.

  
The long skirt of her coat acted like a drag. Daina skidded backward a step, and then another, straining against the hot Mist wind. Basch’s arm circled her shoulders. He pulled her to his side, his cheek pressed into the top of her head. She clung to him gratefully.


	11. Interlude, part ten

“And lo!” Cid crowed from behind the wind. “How brightly burned their lanthorn! Casts it back the shadow of occurian design! Testament that Man’s history shall be His alone!”

“You made your nethicite for this,” Balthier spat, somewhere to Daina’s right. “You mimic the occuria’s stone for what? To become a god yourself?”

“On whose shoulders better to stand than those of the would-be gods!” Cid crowed. He was nothing but a dark shape against the blazing Sun-Cryst. “Such high hopes I once had, but you ran, and they with you! Alas, your return is too late. Come, Ffamran! Revel in the glory of my triumph!”

“Can you fight?” Basch asked in Daina’s ear, his voice stripped of all gentleness until it was as hard as steel.

“Yes,” she answered roughly. Three things, in all of this chaos, were agonizingly clear: First, Cidolfus Bunansa was her father’s murderer and the sole hume responsible for the eradication of the royal city of Nabradia. Second, Balthier was no longer Ffamran, and the father he’d loved was no longer present behind those spectacles. Lastly, it was her sworn duty to take this madman down for the sake of Dalmasca. Daina grabbed Basch’s phoenix pendant and pulled on the chain until he bent enough that she could kiss him, and then she stood away from him, drawing the yakei once more.

Cid produced his energy rifles and fired at his son. She heard Balthier curse, and then she attacked. Cid proved as nimble as ever. With his continuous fire, it was impossible for her to get close enough to strike him, but he could certainly draw a bead on her. More than once, she felt the energy beams rip through armor and skin. Basch, Vaan, and Ashe were having the same problem. Penelo strove to assist them, darting among her friends to confer positive status effects that enhanced their fighting abilities, doling out potions where necessary. That was everyone, barring Reddas, whom she had not seen since Gabranth stuck him down, except –

Where was Fran?

“Behold the manufacted nethicite,” Cid gushed, holding aloft an orange stone that resembled the blue sample Larsa had carried. “The fruit of our own power and knowledge! See what the stone of Man is capable of! Witness its power with your own eyes!”

He threw the stone into the air and fired at it. A magick circle bloomed beneath Cid, and some of the shrieking Mist coalesced. A blue-gray esper reared above the akademician, draped in chains, balancing a wide-mouthed urn on its shoulder. From within the urn, a sound like a squall issued, rivaling the storm outside.

“Belias!” Ashe cried, and she raised her fist to spike the gigas’s crystal on the floor.

Cid immediately opened fire on her. She broke off her summon to bring her aegis shield around. He couldn’t stop them all from summoning their disgraced favorites of the gods, however.

Hashmal’s topaz smashed first, followed by Shemhazai’s ruby. Vaan flung an amethyst into the mix, freeing Mateus. The three espers formed a barrier between Cid’s summoned fiend and their hume masters. They unleashed a magickal storm that sent tingles racing across Daina’s scalp. Cid, standing unprotected beneath his esper, could not avoid the blast.

Hashmal, Shemhazai, and Mateus disappeared. One by one, they returned to their crystals, which the Mist mended and made whole. Balthier took aim and fired. Cid’s depleted esper dropped its urn and surrendered its name to the sky pirate: Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud. The crystal that formed was not the orange nethicite with which Cid had trapped the esper in the first place, but a cloudy lapis lazuli.

To Daina’s amazement, Cid was still on his feet. He looked relatively unharmed, though extremely put out. He watched his erstwhile ally fail. He glared at his son. Shakily, he brought his energy rifles up.

He dropped them, a grimace of pain searing across his face. He collapsed. Gold afterimages rose above him like burning snowflies.

Balthier abandoned his own gun and ran forward. Venat materialized, blocking his way. Balthier glared at it with acid in his expression.

“Let him by, Venat,” Cid said breathlessly. “It is done.”

Expressionless, faceless, the flame-eyed occurian drifted to the side.

“Ah, how I have enjoyed these six years,” Cid grunted, getting to his feet.

“The pleasure was all mine,” Venat said, its dual tones managing to convey real appreciation. Balthier deliberately walked right through the creature, and it vanished.

Daina could see Cid properly now, see the golden flecks of light spinning on the air. Another one detached itself from his hand, and the Sun-Cryst shone through his glove. He was dissolving into Mist. Balthier studied this phenomenon, shoulders slumped.

“Was there no other way?” he asked regretfully.

“Spend your pity elsewhere,” Cid said with a faint laugh, tinged with mockery. At himself or at his son, Daina couldn’t tell. “If you are so set on running, hadn’t you best be off? Fool of a pirate.”

In a flash of light that was barely discernable over the Sun-Cryst’s alarming brilliance, Cid simply ceased to be. The Cryst seemed to soak up his essence. It was beautiful, in a way, but terrible, too.

Weary to her very soul, Daina looked on until Penelo exclaimed, “Fran?”

Penelo raced to the viera, who lay on the floor. Sweat glistened across Fran’s dusky face.

“The Mist burns,” she moaned. “To bursting, it beats. The cocoon!”

As if in response, the Cryst pulsed, the Mist wind hotter and stronger than before.

Balthier went to her. Penelo scooted aside to make room for him. He grasped Fran’s shoulder.

“The Sun-Cryst bursts,” she said to him. “You must run. As far as you can.”

“Easy, Fran,” he said, carefully lifting her head.

She reached up and cupped his cheek in her long-fingered hand. “Hadn’t you best be off?” she asked weakly. “That’s what a sky pirate does. You fly, don’t you?”

Daina couldn’t see Balthier’s face, but after a moment, he took Fran’s hand in his and glibly answered, “I suppose you’d better hang on then.”

What felt like an earthquake shivered through the floor; the Cryst’s emissions rocked the Pharos to its foundations. Daina looked for him, but sometime during the battle with Cid, Gabranth had fled. Balthier and Penelo helped Fran to her feet and began leading her to the lift.

“Ashe!” Vaan yelled against the gale. “The sword! We have to stop it!”

He traded Reddas’s scimitar for the Treaty-Blade. Ashe hefted the Sword of Kings. They strained against the Mist, but neither could make any headway, their hair and clothes streaming straight back. Daina wanted to help her lady, but the wind was too strong for her, too. She thought it might strip the flesh from her bones.

That was when she saw him. Reddas.

The huge man waded through the Mist-wind until he reached Ashe. He took the nethicite-destroyer from her hands.

* * *

Daina renewed her fight to reach her lady. Her boots slipped and slid against stone tiles and she fell to one knee. She couldn’t breathe in the gale. It blew Reddas’s speech back to her.

“You must quit this place,” he said. “It’s reacting. I have not seen its like before! Nay, never this large. Never such threat impendent.” He hoisted the Sword of Kings and finished, “For Nabudis.”

In an impossible feat of strength, Reddas ran full tilt at the Cryst and performed one of his flying leaps, lifting the greatsword over his head. As if the Cryst understood its peril, it gathered enough Mist to halt Reddas in midair like sap trapping a fly. Some of the vortex nearer the floor lessened, used up in the Cryst’s fight against the former judge, and Daina lurched to Ashe’s side. In slow motion, Reddas seemed to continue on his trajectory through sheer force of will.

“Reddas, no!” Vaan yelled.

“Come!” Basch’s rough voice called urgently. His hand closed on Daina’s elbow. He seized the princess as well. His broad shoulders shielded the women somewhat from the wind. “Vaan! You cannot help him!”

_“I, Judge Magister, condemn you to oblivion!”_

For a brief moment, half a heartbeat, an indrawn breath, the hot Mist ceased altogether.

Then it erupted more fiercely than before.

Reddas had sunk the nethicite-destroyer deep in the coffin-sized Cryst, and it had exploded. Daina, Basch, Ashe, and Vaan reached the lift at a dead run and were hurled onto it like a handful of leaves driven by a hurricane. The damaged lift plummeted, carrying them down at breakneck speeds while the column of Mist and water collapsed around them. Daina felt the exact moment the cloudstone failed – she lost contact with the platform when it plunged at a velocity that left safety far behind. Penelo nearly killed herself cushioning their fall with a massive float spell. She wasn’t able to save the lift, however, which ruined itself upon the wet stone floor.

They tumbled out the bottom of the Pharos amid a flock of panicked beasts, seawater crashing around their knees and masonry about their ears. Bruised, shaken, and battered, the seven companions raced to the _Strahl_ and crowded into the cockpit. Vaan hung anxiously over Balthier’s seat, swaying with the motion of the _Strahl_ as the airship lifted and swung around to face the tower. Ashe laid her hand on his shoulder, offering silent support. Without a word, Daina sank next to Basch, not touching him but taking comfort from his nearness.

By then, the Cryst’s fury had spent itself. The cloudless blue sky embraced the sea, calm on its course over the world’s end. It might have been as if they’d never come, but the tower’s scarred peak resembled a volcano’s shattered caldera. The annihilation of the Cryst had vaporized the top floors of the lighthouse and everything in them.

“Reddas,” Vaan murmured. He ducked his head, his fair hair hiding his eyes.

Nobody said anything for a long time. The Sun-Cryst was no more. Reddas had not escaped the Cryst’s undoing. They had succeeded, but at a cost no one should ever have to pay.

* * *

Since no better ideas presented themselves, Basch and Balthier decided it would be best to return to Balfonheim Port. When neither Daina nor Ashe objected, the _Strahl_ turned her nose to the west. Her glossair engines purred as she carried them away from the City of Other Days.

Daina fell asleep on the voyage, bereft of songs. She awakened when the _Strahl_ banked over Balfonheim’s harbor. Her bleary eyes picked out Rikken, Elza, and Raz standing on the quay, staring out at the dawn-bright eastern ocean.

Did Elza know that her leader had fallen? Daina turned away from the porthole, sickened by the thought that it was their quest that had ended the pirate king’s life.

The group separated once it reached Reddas’s manse, to sleep, to seek something to eat, or to simply be alone. His servants opened his doors to them. Like Ashe, they were aimless, going through the motions because they didn’t know what else to do.

The battles to gain the lighthouse peak and to claim victory over the Sun-Cryst had taken much out of Daina. She dawdled until only Basch remained. She smiled when he invited her to him with a smoldering amber look. They wandered through the art gallery, talking about the past and the future, but never about the present. They spoke of Noah, but not of Gabranth. They discussed the fates of Landis and Nabradia, but not of Dalmasca. They shared childhood memories, good and bad, but avoided the _right now._ There was too much uncertainty in right now, too much pain and grief. Just this once, Daina wanted to grasp her life in both hands and direct its weave rather than let Fate shuttle her thread through its loom.

There was a sort of desperation in this stolen time together. At Basch’s rooms, talking turned into kissing, filled with hunger that weakened her knees and started a trembling deep in her belly. Her eyes closed and she leaned against him, secure in the circle of his arms.

“Will you stay?” he asked, his voice sounding deeper with her ear on his chest. It sent more shivers through her as if she’d been burned by fire, or ice.

For an answer, she drew him down and surrendered herself to him.

* * *

Later that day, someone knocked. Daina sat on the settee, braiding her lily-blonde hair. Basch, wearing only his pendant and his shorts, the button undone, opened the door. The manse servant on the other side spoke too quietly for her to hear, but Basch had a strange look on his face when he returned and knelt before her. He touched her hand, and she smiled. She put her forehead to his, breathing in his warm golden scent in total contentment.

“Our presence has been requested,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows and sat up. “By whom?”

“He announced himself a friend but did not leave a name.”

Daina rose. “I will inform Lady Ashe. Will you see to the others?”

“Aye.” He kissed her, running his fingers once through her hair, and they parted.

* * *

Daina heard Rikken on her way to her lady’s room. “Blast the sea! Blast the waves! Blast it all! I don’t believe he’s gone. He’s Reddas. How could he die?”

“Hadn’t you noticed?” came Elza’s pouting, impatient, seductive tones. “He’d been searching for a place to die all along.”

“Lord Reddas weren’t the sort of man to run away from his problems by dyin’!” squawked the little nu mou, Raz. “He weren’t! How could he abandon this town?”

“You’d have him regret passing?” Elza snapped. “You’d have him suffer and wail for eternity?”

“Th-that’s not what I meant.” Raz paused. “No, if he’s gone, then he should rest in peace. Gods know, he deserves it.”

“Then let him. If you’ve time to mourn and curse him, then you’ve certainly time to carry on what he started. If you don’t wish an eternity of regret on him, then let’s do our part here, and know he’s watching over us, satisfied.”

“Satisfied?” Rikken snorted. “Reddas? We’d be lucky if we earned a ‘not disappointed’ from him!”

Daina turned a corner. Their voices faded, but their words remained seared in her heart.

* * *

The lady knight and the princess walked arm in arm down the hall, neither speaking. There were no words adequate for what had happened to them on the one-hundredth floor in the Pharos at Ridorana. However, Ashe seemed more alive than she had in the past two years. It was as if the burden she bore was no longer a crushing weight. Instead, it was proof of her strength, proudly lifted. Thus, when she walked into Reddas’s billiard room, her head high and her gray eyes filled with light, Al-Cid Margrace seemed momentarily struck by her, though half his face was hidden, as it had been on Mt. Bur-Omisace, by his sunglasses.

“Al-Cid?” Vaan asked, expressing everybody’s surprise at seeing the Rozarrian noble lounging in Reddas’s chair. Al-Cid’s handmaid, whose name Daina had never learned, waited as blank as ever at his shoulder.

Swiftly recovering his poise, Al-Cid explained, “We let ourselves inside. The situation is one demanding some haste, you understand.”

“How did you know where we were?” Vaan asked as everyone else filed inside.

Al-Cid lowered his feet to the floor and stood, unsmiling. “My little birds,” he said, his r’s rolling like the ocean waves as he gave his handmaid a meaningful glance, “they tell me many, many things. My lady, the war begins now.”

“Then you were unsuccessful in stopping the Rozarrian fleet?” Ashe clasped her hands, but she did not fiddle with her wedding ring. She was focused wholly on Al-Cid and his answer.

“All went according to plan until it came time to request withdrawal of our most devoted generals,” he said. He sauntered to the billiard table and picked up one of the ship models, while Balthier, Fran, Basch, and Penelo moved in closer. He spoke to the model. “In their enthusiasm for war, our great military leaders went behind my back, straight to Marquis Ondore’s Resistance.”

Ashe frowned. “The Resistance?”

“During training, a division of the Resistance ignored their orders and disappeared,” he elaborated. “They were next found exchanging broadsides with the Imperials over Old Nabradia.”

“Why would they go there?” Basch demanded. “They were asking to be found!”

“You misunderstand.” Al-Cid tossed the model back onto the green-felted table. “Those ships most surely belonged to a Rozarrian division. They may have joined Ondore’s Resistance forces as patriots or even mercenaries, but they are regulars of the Rozarrian army under direct command of our War Pavilion. This fifth column has invaded Imperial airspace and provoked a response. His Excellency, the Marquis, was obliged to give his main fleet the order to attack. And the battleground,” Al-Cid looked at Ashe, his handsome, dark face full of regret, “is Dalmasca.”

Ashe said nothing. Her expression betrayed her dismay.

Balthier settled himself on the billiard table’s edge.

“Rozarria will enter the fray,” he prophesied, “the defense of Dalmasca as their excuse, and we will have a war between empires.”

“They will bide their time, wait until the Empire has spent itself against the marquis. But Vayne – he will crush them and the marquis both between his hands,” Al-Cid said, clapping his own hands together in emphasis.

“Vayne holds the Dusk Shard no longer,” Basch said. “His advantage is lost.”

Al-Cid, however, brushed this news aside with a wave of his hand. “Vayne has advantages enough. He stands on higher ground, and my birds tell me he has awoken something quite large. Bahamut, Lord of the Sky.” He peered sideways at them over the rims of his glasses. “There was a stirring in the Mist near Ridorana. Bahamut awoke soon after this.”

Fran crossed her arms, her silver eyebrows contracting. “It is the Mist that came before the Cryst was undone. It breathed life into this Bahamut. If Reddas had not stopped it when he did, how much more Mist might it have drunk? All went according to Dr. Cid’s designs.” She approached Balthier, her face questioning.

“Yes, the man’s last great accomplishment, I fear,” her partner said darkly. “And so it falls to me to put an end to this thing.”

Dr. Cid had also mentioned Bahamut. At the time, Daina had thought he meant some unholy wyrm, a creature of flesh and blood. But now, turning the name over in her mind, she realized that it was the title of an airship. An airship built not around magicite, but manufacted nethicite. Powered up and ready to go, thanks to the Sun-Cryst.

“Vayne commands _Bahamut_ himself?” Ashe queried, stepping forward.

“He comes to Rabanastre,” Al-Cid acknowledged.

“Then I will defend Dalmasca and stop this _Bahamut,”_ Ashe said. “This is my charge –”

“That’s our charge, actually,” Vaan interrupted at her side.

Ashe looked at him. A smile began. When Penelo ran up to her other side, it blossomed.

“It’s our home,” Penelo said sweetly. “It belongs to us all.”

Ashe looked around at everyone, her smile answered by each of them in turn.

At that, Al-Cid and his handmaid both headed for the door, seemingly of one mind. He said, “And my charge is to hinder and delay this Rozarrian invasion for as long as is possible. I will do what I can.”

Then, he stopped and turned around. “Ah, yes . . .” He strode up to Ashe. With typical western flair, he took up her hand and removed his sunglasses. His dark blue eyes bored into hers. He spoke with real sincerity. “When this unpleasantness is done, you must come to Rozarria. I will take you to the Ambervale of Clan Margrace. Such things I will show you! Until then, I will be waiting.”

He left, then, and was the only one who missed Ashe’s flattered expression and how her hand was slow to return to her side.

Balthier saw and heaved a sigh, shaking his head. A slight movement at his side made him glance at Fran – and at her knowing, affectionate smile. The viera’s wise eyes missed nothing.

Not for the first time, Daina wondered how much Fran still loved him. Balthier, however, glanced away again, clearly embarrassed. It was such an alien expression on his handsome face that Daina struggled with a laugh, not wanting to call Ashe’s attention to him. There would be obstacles enough for them if he chose to pursue his suit. He was a loyal ally and had proved his worth many times over. A true friend. For that, she wished him luck in whatever he decided to do.

How strange that these weeks of traveling together could change her perceptions so! She glanced at Basch to see how he took it, and he gave her a small, private smile, just for her.

* * *

They saw the approach of the Sky Fortress _Bahamut_ first, before ever laying eyes on the airship itself: A great black funnel cloud tearing up the sands of the desert to the north of Rabanastre. In the city below, people poured out of homes and shops in a living river. They climbed the fountain in the southern plaza, they perched on rooftops like doves, they hung over balconies like colorful rugs. A forest of fingers rose, pointing at the approaching storm and the cold running lights of a ship visible within.

The _Strahl’s_ radio crackled to life. A mixture of Archadian and Bhujerban voices streamed through the speakers, their meaning lost to the cacophony of a war engaged. The battle hove into view, dreadnoughts and frigates floating in the Dalmascan skies. Smaller ships zoomed between them, some exploding like firecrackers as they were hit by enemy salvos.

The Resistance had indeed grown, but Vayne was ready for them. The sandstorm died down. Daina’s mouth went dry at the sight of _Bahamut._ The great ship, shaped like an elongated spinning top, checked her speed, looming in the distance.

A tiny speck of tangerine light bloomed aboard _Bahamut:_ A cannon. It shot a beam of light toward one of the Resistance cruisers. The cruiser vanished in a familiar plasmatic inferno.

“So. The manufacted nethicite still operates,” Daina said from the rear of the cockpit. She had hoped that destroying the Sun-Cryst would destroy all nethicite, too. Only Penelo heard her, and the younger girl bit her lip.

Balthier piloted the _Strahl_ into the outer fringes of the air battle, heading for the monstrosity that was the sky fortress. _Bahamut_ fired again, the plasma spinning in the air, and Rabanastre lit up in gorgeous, sparkling shimmers as the beam passed.

“The city’s paling seems to have resisted the nethicite’s blasts so far, but I doubt it could withstand a direct hit,” Basch said.

Ashe lunged forward and snatched up one of the microphones. Fran, seeing what she meant to do, fiddled with the radio’s controls, fine-tuning their reception. It squealed, popped with static, and then a single Bhujerban said, “Unknown ship from abaft!”

Balthier piloted the _Strahl_ right past the Resistance flagship, the _Garland,_ to allow _Garland’s_ crew to identify her. From _Garland’s_ bridge, Marquis Ondore cried, “Could it be?”

Fran nodded at Ashe, giving her the go-ahead.

“Uncle, it is I!” Ashe said into the microphone, bracing herself against Fran’s seat as Balthier brought their ship around. “I’m crossing to _Bahamut_ to stop Vayne!”

“What are you saying?” the marquis coolly asked. “You are too rash! Your duties come after the battle is over!”

“If we allow them to destroy us here, there will be no after,” Ashe retorted. She almost lost her footing, but Basch was there, and he steadied her. “You must assist our charge.”

“Stop,” Ondore said sharply. “You must pull back!” And then, quieter, as if he’d turned away from his own microphone, they heard him say, “Stop the _Strahl!”_

Vaan dove for the second microphone. He pressed the side button. A red light burned. “Hold it!” he cried, and his voice shot across the airwaves, elegantly accented, five years too young. “I mean, w-wait! This is Larsa Solidor! I’m going in with her! So, we’re fine! I got the princess covered!”

A long pause succeeded this.

“Larsa Solidor?” Ondore asked, sounding far less composed than Daina had ever heard him. “So you hold him as a hostage?”

“No, Uncle,” Ashe said, not missing a beat. “He will fight with us against Vayne!”

“Leave it to us!” Vaan added in the prince’s voice.

The two Dalmascans waited, clutching their mikes.

“Understood,” Ondore said at last. “Our fate is in your hands.”

“Yes!” Vaan cried, dropping the mike and throwing himself backward into his seat.

Swaying, Penelo leaned across the aisle. “ ‘I got the princess covered’?” she repeated wryly.

“Larsa’d say that,” he said defensively.

Balthier leaned toward Ashe’s still-activated mike and spoke to the marquis. “We’re relying on you for fire support. Give them something to think about. We’ll pick our moment and make our move!”

Daina gripped the arms of her seat as the _Strahl_ zipped around and under the ships occupying Rabanastran airspace, both enemy and ally. Several shells exploded near enough to rock the ship. The _Strahl_ was a private cruiser, incapable of returning fire. This was madness. Utter madness.

“Quite the welcome! Careful!” Balthier yelled.

“One follows!” Fran barked.

“Ah, you want to dance! Then let’s dance!” Balthier sounded exhilarated. He yanked the yoke up, and the _Strahl_ took a stomach-leaping nosedive.

Oh, how Daina hated this. She felt so useless, unable to do anything to either assist the sky pirates or to save herself should something untoward happen. She couldn’t see much, either, except what flashed across the _Strahl’s_ small ports. A few shots struck their hull, making the entire ship and the lady knight within it shudder.

“A new partner,” Fran observed.

“It’s not easy being this popular, you know,” Balthier quipped. Daina, picturing the grin plastered across his face, cursed him to the abyss.

With what must have been a fair bit of skill, Balthier shook their pursuers. He flew the _Strahl_ straight past _Bahamut’s_ glossair rings and then angled up along the massive fortress, the thrust sending Daina deep into her seat. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“There it is,” he announced. At last, the _Strahl_ slowed, leveled, and then docked.

“Come on! Come on!” Vaan cried, waving them down the gangplank.

Once inside, the fortress plunged them into a nighttime gloom. Daina breathed a sigh of relief; _Bahamut_ was so gargantuan that she could not feel the slightest movement in the floor beneath her feet, though she knew that the fortress was still heading for the royal city. Ashe came to a halt, looking uncertainly around.

“Vayne will be in the fortress’s command tower,” Balthier said, fixing his cuff. “I saw something of the like on our way in here. Right above our heads.”

“We need not fight all the Empire to win,” the princess said. “If we can get to Vayne, we can put an end to this war.”

“Let’s get going then,” said Vaan, scrubbing the back of his head. “Find Vayne, wherever he’s perched, and knock him off.”

Daina grinned. That was just like him. All seven of them converged, united to a single purpose. They looked at each other, and then, at Ashe’s signal, passed through the compartment door into the fortress’s interior catwalks.

* * *

They moved as quickly and stealthily as possible, encountering very few soldiers who were probably on fire watch; most of the crew would be at their battle stations. A grand staircase led toward the central hub. They descended it cautiously.

Something rammed _Bahamut_ with enough force to unbalance the sky fortress. Ashe grabbed the railing and Daina grabbed Basch. Vaan and Penelo hugged each other to keep from falling. It had been easy to forget the battle raging outside while cocooned in the silent, red-lit catwalks.

“The Resistance fights their battle well,” Fran said, echoing Daina’s thoughts. “We dare not fail them. We dare not falter.”

“Stop worrying,” Vaan said from several steps lower. “We just have to clean up here, and then Ashe’ll be the queen.”

“It’s kind of hard to believe. I can’t even imagine trying to rule a whole kingdom,” Penelo said in her customary sweet way.

“I can’t imagine our Ashe doing anything less,” Daina said, grinning.

“A queen might ‘run away’ with the help of a sky pirate looking to raise his bounty,” Basch said with a rare flash of humor.

“I doubt our queen would need the help of any sky pirates,” Balthier returned, smirking.

“Do you really think me as strong as all that?” Ashe asked with a breathy little laugh. She smiled up at Balthier.

“Who said anything about strong?” Vaan cocked his head. “You’ll make it. You’ve got good friends.”

Daina held out her fist, and Vaan bumped his into it.

* * *

It was a short trip from the central hub to the main lift. Vaan trotted up to the controls with Penelo at his shoulder and began poking at them.

Noise, apparently too faint for hume hearing. Fran’s silver-furred ear flicked. She wheeled. Balthier, Ashe, and Daina did also. Daina’s eyes widened.

Basch turned last, slowly, as if he already knew who owned the heavy footsteps behind him. “So,” he said in his low, rough voice. “You have lived.”

“I am judge magister. Even in disgrace. My just reward for aiding the Empire that destroyed my homeland,” Gabranth said, a sword in each hand. He took a step and then faltered, swaying with the effort to remain upright. His labored breathing made Daina’s lungs ache in sympathy.

“Gabranth.” Pained, Basch shook his wheat-gold head. “Do not blame yourself anymore.”

“You confound me, Brother!” the other shouted, as if stealing Basch’s ruined voice and then mending it. “You failed Landis, you failed Dalmasca, all you were to protect. Yet you still hold on to your honor. How?”

“I had someone more important to defend,” Basch said, a tilt of his head indicating the princess at his side. “And defend her I have. How is it that you have survived? Is it not because you defend Lord Larsa?”

“Silence!” Gabranth roared. “All was stripped from me! Only hatred for the brother who fled our homeland remains mine. Tell me: Why do you forsake that which you must hold most precious?”

“I do as I must, Brother,” Basch said angrily. “Or is that not answer enough?”

Gabranth raised his black blades.

This time, Daina did not hold back. She and Ashe drew their swords. The two knights who had adopted Dalmasca and its princess advanced on the wounded judge. Gabranth’s reflexes were slow, and his blows lacked real strength. Then, two things happened at once. Gabranth used an elixir, a rare tincture that restored him to full health, and mechanized rooks flooded the central hub, slinging magick and bullets in quick succession.

“Vaan, I want you to get that lift in order,” Balthier commanded. “Fran!”

“I’ll take the left,” the viera said. The two sky pirates proceeded to thin the ranks of rooks with shot and arrow.

The renewed judge put his swords together. He stood tall, a black arbiter of death. “Futile, Basch! Long have I walked in hatred’s company. As long as I can curse your name, I shall not be defeated.”

“Then come!” challenged the knight, standing straight and golden. “Wield your hatred and crush me. I welcome it!”

Gabranth was quicker now, and stronger. He unleashed terrible spells and attacks that broke bones and made blood flow. Daina was reminded of her flight through the palace on the night of the fete as her supply of potions dwindled until it was gone.

“Look, Basch, your friends die! As they must, for surely you cannot protect them!” Gabranth jeered. He whisked his double-bladed sword through the air. Daina cried out when he struck and disarmed her. He kicked her to the floor. Stars winked bloody. She lay there, dazed and in pain, while Gabranth continued to taunt his older brother. “Know now the despair you have taught me!”

_Your first mistake,_ Daina thought as her eyes slipped shut. _My defeat will only make him stronger._

The bloody stars swiveled around a shrinking horizon, slowly going dark.

Daina drifted dreamless.

* * *

Then Ashe was there, spilling potion between Daina’s lips. By the time Daina could stand, Gabranth seemed unable to fight any longer. Panting, the twins faced each other. Gabranth dropped one sword, but then he stubbornly leveled the other at Basch.

“Have you your fill of this?” he asked, sounding weary to the core.

“I would ask you the same,” Basch replied evenly. His brow relaxed over sad amber eyes. “Let this end, Noah.”

Gabranth staggered. He crashed to his knees. Blood dripped from between the joints of his plate. “I’ve no right to be called by that name,” he said dully.

“Then live,” Basch urged, “and reclaim it.”

Gabranth made no reply. Somewhere behind Daina, Vaan crowed; he had finally gotten the lift to respond, and it began to rise. On his knees, Gabranth made his slow, pained way to the edge of the lift.

“I can help you if you want,” Penelo said hesitantly, holding her arc scale aloft.

“Save your pity,” he growled, coming to rest against the railing, and then he went silent. If it weren’t for the labored rise and fall of his shoulders that denoted breathing, he might have been an empty suit of armor. Penelo looked uncertainly up at Basch.

He shook his head. “Lady,” he started to ask in his rough voice, searching for Daina, but she cut him off before he could betray them both.

“I’m fine,” she said, “though I am out of potions.”

“I have none left,” Ashe agreed.

They looked at each other as this realization sank in, but then Penelo bravely said, “Don’t worry. Fran and I can keep us alive. Right, Fran?”

“We must,” the viera said soberly.

There was nothing else to do but move forward. The lift continued smoothly upward, depositing them on an upper floor. All except Gabranth, who remained slumped in a corner.

Daina stepped off the lift into a darkened, almost empty room. Almost, but not quite. Standing in the middle of the floor, Vayne and his younger brother Larsa looked like they had been arguing. Larsa’s small face was pinched and unhappy. He gasped when he saw them.

“I bid you welcome to my sky fortress, the _Bahamut,”_ Vayne said graciously, and then he bowed. He lacked anything that could be termed _fear,_ from head to foot the quintessential aristocrat. “I must apologize for my delay in welcoming you aboard my ship.”

He straightened, smiling through his fall of dark hair. “Permit me to ask: Who are you?” he murmured. “An angel of vengeance? Or perchance a saint of salvation?”

Ashe, to whom this speech was directed, softly answered, “I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I want only to be free.”

“Such a woman is not fit to bear the burden of rule,” said Vayne in the same calm tones. He raised his gloved fist. “Weep for Dalmasca, for she is lost. Observe well, Larsa. Watch and mark you the suffering of one who must rule, yet lacks the power.”

“No,” Larsa said.

Daina looked at the young prince. Although the top of his head hovered near his elder brother’s elbow, he had drawn his joyeuse and pointed it at Vayne. The tip shook. He grasped the hilt with both gloved hands to keep it steady.

“No, Brother. I will not,” Larsa said, stronger. “Though I lack your power, I will still persist.”

Vayne had not reacted, but he said, “Bold words, child.”

Taking advantage of his distraction, Ashe attacked Archadia’s dictator, her sword thrusting toward his neck. He responded in kind, punching her in the side of the head. Basch joined her before Vayne could really hurt her, but Larsa seemed undecided.

“Stay back, Lord Prince,” Daina advised, standing between him and his brother. “Let us repay you for all the aid you have lent us thus far.”

“Your lives are forfeit and your Insurgence with them,” Vayne snapped, hearing her. “Dalmasca will again know order. For good and all, I shall bring your futile attempts at rebellion to an end.”

* * *

Though his words were fierce, Vayne, who fought only with his fists, could not stand against the princess and her knights. Larsa compensated for his unwillingness to harm his brother by doling out hi-potions, healing their wounds as fast as Vayne could deal them. Daina and the others did not give Vayne the chance to heal himself, and so they defeated him. His dark fall of hair swung forward when he collapsed face first onto the floor at Ashe’s feet.

“Lord Brother!” Larsa cried, and ran to him.

Vaan tried to stop him, but the child was too quick – and then, startling them all, Larsa’s small body went rigid. Gold lightning engulfed him midstride. It held him there, bending his spine, coaxing tendons into view in his slender white neck. Then, he fell.

What looked like a blanket of bloody Mist sparkled and coalesced above Larsa, transferring from the small boy to Vayne. The elder rose – not like a man getting to his own feet, but more like a puppet raised by its strings. His hands and head hung limp. His booted toes left the floor. Then, consumed by wracking spasms, his body swelled. Bones cracked, joints popped apart, and Vayne screamed as the red Mist exploded outward.

It was just like the wind generated by the Sun-Cryst, except here, there was nowhere for the hot Mist to go. It blasted into Daina’s face, struck the bulkheads, and folded back against itself. It howled like the white wolves in the rifts of Paramina. She braced herself against its erratic forces.

Vayne raised his head, a man transformed. His torso bulged with misshapen muscle, his previously sleek, dark hair wild and tangled. Golden snowflies of Mist danced around his body. The bloody Mist clouds billowed around Daina. In a breath, the wind eased, settling around their ankles and then sighing away.

“Manufacted neithicite,” Ashe said, revulsion clear on her face.

The transformation to abomination wasn’t quite complete. More Mist solidified into eight autonomous greatswords that flocked to Vayne, apparently tied to his will. They arranged themselves in a mandala of death. He raised his hands and said, “Behold the power left me by our fallen friend.”

Daina actually took a step back. Surely even Dr. Cid had not planned this. Vayne’s face – it was distorted, stretched by a terrible rictus of a smile. His skin sagged, decaying as she watched. Shockingly white bone and raw pink muscle shone beneath the blackened folds. His eyes were cold no longer. Not those of a vulture, but of a necrofiend.

Beneath his floating form, tiny Larsa lay unmoving. Emotionlessly, Vayne said, “Gabranth, you will defend my brother. He will have much need in the hell to follow.”

So absorbed by Vayne’s transformation, Daina had not seen Gabranth pull himself from the lift and approach them. He stood alone at the far end of the room. His helm briefly turned to the fallen prince, and then he unsheathed one sword. This, he pointed at Vayne.

“Yes,” Gabranth said forcefully. “I will defend Lord Larsa.”

Vayne’s molten eyes narrowed. He bared yellowed, rotten teeth. When he spoke, it was in tones of frostbite. “The hound strays. Treason bears a price.”

“One I gladly pay,” Gabranth retorted. The judge ran at his former master.

The eight sephira greatswords spun like a disjointed serpent, slicing most of the light into ribbons that dimmed and then went out. One blade struck Gabranth. Ice crystals froze the joints of his left gauntlet. A second one narrowly missed him. Little tongues of purple electricity snapped in the air.

Daina drew both the iga blade and the yakei when a fiery sephira made straight for her. Without a living hand wielding it, the sephira moved faster than sight, arced high out of reach, and thrust from unexpected angles. Her fighting style evolved, her two blades becoming shield and sword. It had been a long time since she’d practiced fighting this way, but she triumphed over the red sephira, just in time for a white, holy elemental one to take its place.

Daina’s heart pounded hard against her ribs like a ball shaken in a jar. In the darkness, she could not see how any of her friends were faring, nor could she see Vayne or Gabranth. However, she heard Vayne as if he was shouting in her ear.

_“Ivalice will know a new Dynast-King, and Man will keep his own history! The tyranny of the gods is ended! We are their puppets no more! The freedom for which we have longed is at hand!”_

He was powerful. More than once, Daina staggered as he let loose some kind of area attack that ferreted her out in the darkness. She grimly battled through it each time. Then Vaan streaked by her in hot pursuit of a sephira hemorrhaging shadows.

“Vaan! Are you okay?” she shouted.

“Daina!” He grinned, blood dripping from his hairline and chin. He swiped it away as carelessly as sweat and called over his shoulder, “Penelo, she’s over here!”

After that, they were joined by Balthier, then Fran, and finally, Basch and Ashe. They struck down a sephira, and it disintegrated into a pile of glittering dirt. Daina’s lungs were on fire. She was drenched in sweat. Now that she could stand unmolested in one place, she focused on the two main combatants.

Roaring, Gabranth charged a final time at Vayne. His cyclone cut sliced deep into Vayne’s mutated body. It cleaved clavicle and shoulder, lodging in his sternum.

As if this had been no more than a child’s slap, Vayne commanded his last sephira, which shot at Gabranth. The sephira severed a large piece of Gabranth’s helm, which exposed his left eye.

Daina gasped. If it weren’t for the smoothness of his eyebrow, Basch might have been the one behind the faceplate.

Unmasked, Gabranth glared at Vayne and said, “Even a stray has pride!”

More of the golden snowflies appeared, bleeding from the cyclone cut. Vayne hurled Gabranth from him with a blast of Mist that sounded like a fired cannon.

As if they had never argued once in their lives, Basch ran to his younger brother and lifted his head from the floor. The former judge’s helm was missing. Blood streaked his face. It dyed his close-shorn hair walnut-brown. He lay in his brother’s embrace, limp and broken.

“Here I pay my debt,” he said with a sigh.

_“Burn in hell, Gabranth!”_ Vayne bellowed. He created five more sephiras and sent them whizzing toward the brothers.

“Basch!” Daina shrieked.

She started forward, a sob building in her throat. She would never make it in time! She watched in agony as the sephiras closed the distance to her lover.

Then, incredibly, the sephiras stopped moving as if someone had flipped a switch. Lord Larsa stood tall between Vayne and the brothers, his blue sample of nethicite held high in his small hand. Defiantly, Larsa locked eyes with the thing that had once been his own brother. One by one, the manufacted stone sucked the sephiras into its eldritch blue depths. The stone shattered. The pieces glittered as they fell, and then they vanished.

Vaan reacted first. He sprinted toward Vayne, picking up Gabranth’s sword as he went, howling like a berserker. They collided front-to-back, and the tip of the sword exited Vayne’s chest. Black Mist streamed out of Vayne’s sundered ribcage, which knocked Vaan onto his backside and sent Vayne soaring over a barrier, to crash down the stairs on the other side. Vaan flung the sword away and pelted after him, leaping the barrier. Balthier, Fran, and Ashe raced after them both.

* * *

Larsa’s hand slowly lowered. The boy dropped to his knees, on the verge of tears. Penelo rushed up to him and put her arms around his shoulders.

Daina was not so secure. She wiped a bloodied, gloved palm over her eyes, and then she moved toward the two men behind Larsa and Penelo. Basch and Gabranth were watching the young people console each other.

“Basch, tell me,” Gabranth murmured, bottom lip glistening red. “He is a good master?”

“Aye,” Basch said roughly, his eyes on Larsa. Then, as if noticing a difference in the weight on his arm, he looked down at his brother.

Gabranth had fainted. Gently, Basch laid him down and stood.

Daina said nothing. She had no potions, nothing with which to help him; Penelo’s pale face and too-large eyes bespoke her inability to help with magick. Possibly, _Bahamut’s_ nethicite-driven engines had tapped into the Mist that Vayne had unleashed, sucking it from the room. Fran, of course, wasn’t there. Thankfully, Gabranth did yet breathe, his clean-shaven face peaceful in a way that Basch’s never was, not even in sleep. If Daina had not known her lover’s visage so well, she would not have seen the one difference that birth had given them: A small, black mole beneath Gabranth’s left eye.

She felt like an intruder, and she turned away her head. Gabranth had rights to Basch’s love that she never would.

Basch’s hand descended on her shoulder. His amber eyes were dark, but love shone there, strengthening her. She and Penelo fell into step behind him, leaving the shell-shocked prince and his vanquished guardian behind.

The catwalk deposited them outside. Outside was chaos.

“My lady!” Daina screamed, throwing up her arms to shield her face. The sky had gone black and red like an enormous bullet wound bleeding Mist that was hot with evil intent. The sky looked close enough to touch, as though it had contracted and there was nothing beyond it but the void. “Ashe!”

“I am here!” the princess called, her fair hair a halo around her besmirched face.

They were there, all of them – Balthier, Fran, Vaan, and Ashe, all facing off against an aberrant mockery of a hume. Vayne was encased in thousands of pounds of metal torn from _Bahamut’s_ hull and cannons. Twelve metallic wings kept him afloat. Only his head remained as a reminder of what he had once been. His eyes burned with a familiar white flame.

“It’s Venat,” Vaan grimly shouted. “They fused, or something. Look out!”

He grabbed the princess and dove aside. Daina leaped the other way. Vayne’s spell hit them nevertheless, enveloping them in plasmatic nethicite fire. Daina dimly heard someone screaming in agony. It was only when her throat closed that she realized she was the one screaming. She choked, and the screams stopped.

Vayne drifted eerily around the catwalk, reminiscent of Venat’s liquid space-shifting, his arms sharpened like swords. Daina used the yakei to lever herself upright, furiously blinking back the red tinge to her vision.

Time seemed to cease. Her friends attacked Vayne with gun, bow, sword, and dagger. She saw them hurt him and saw him bring each one within inches of death in retaliation. Fran’s nonstop curaja spells seemed to keep them alive only to let them suffer more. It was truly a hell, one from which there was no escape.

In the midst of all the battle cries, the clashing of metal on metal, the crackles and whooshes of discharged magick, Daina heard a whisper.

_Free us._

It was a voice heard in her mind, not hear ears. The crystal in her pocket began to sting, like a hundred tiny arrowheads burrowing into her hip. Shemhazai.

_We will show the would-be god what it means to fall. Free us!_

Daina hesitated. The espers were unreliable, Shemhazai especially so. But without aid, they were going to lose this battle. Releasing the espers was their only hope. Daina clenched her fist around The Whisperer’s ruby, and then she pitched it at Vayne. Shemhazai burst free with all the grace of a sleipnir warhorse, her crossbow firing point-blank into his face. The other espers joined her, their anger as tangible as a sword strike, screeching their names in defiance: _Belias! Mateus! Hashmal! Famfrit!_

Through it all, Daina could still hear Shemhazai’s slimy whispers. Long ago, these five espers had been beloved by Faram and all the gods, but they and seven others had revolted against their creators at the urging of a thirteenth, the High Seraph, Ultima. They lost, and for their treachery had been cast out of heaven and bound upon Ivalice. Venat, the occurian heretic, was no more a god than they, and they would not suffer its success where they had failed so abysmally.

The mystical battle between the espers and the Undying was too much for Daina’s exhausted mind to process. The section of _Bahamut_ beneath them began to disintegrate, threatening to drop the six humes and the viera into the desert a mile below. The manufacted nethicite Vayne had swallowed reacted negatively to the magicite-bearing espers, and dual-toned wails filled the whole world as his body, and Venat’s, were torn asunder. Bits of metal and gristle, bone and copper tubing, blood and liquid flame, swirled in a fiery hurricane that stank of sewers.

Then it all blew away. The five espers vanished, taking with them the Undying’s bruised cocoon of Mist.

* * *

Clear blue sky smiled down on the seven comrades.

It was finally over.

They had won.

* * *

Balthier and Fran recovered first, bumping fists and sharing feral grins. Daina burst out laughing through her tears. Ashe’s regal face was wreathed in the most brilliant smile.

And then an Imperial remora air cutter shot by overhead, flames roaring from its damaged glossair engine.

* * *

With the Undying vanquished and his cocoon of Mist gone, the previously muted sounds of the air battle between the Empire and the Resistance were unbearably loud. Their sense of reality restored, Ashe and her renegade warband sprinted back into the sky fortress. They gathered Larsa and the unconscious Gabranth on the way to the _Strahl_ and piled into the smaller ship with little care for anything except stopping the war.

Daina helped Basch lay his brother in one of the bunks in the compartment behind the cockpit. Little Larsa immediately crouched by the judge’s head.

“Well? Can we fly?” Balthier demanded, jumping into his seat.

Fran shook her silver head. “No fuel goes to the glossair engines.”

“Damn!” As quickly as he had gotten into it, Balthier got out of his seat again. “Vaan, you’re in charge. I’m checking the engine room. Fran, with me!”

As they rushed by Daina, a shell exploded straight in front of the ship, its concussion waves nearly knocking Fran into Balthier.

“Look!” Ashe cried, her eyes on the windshield. _“Bahamut’s_ glossair rings are stopping!”

Which meant that _Bahamut_ no longer had the power to fly. If she fell, she would take the unresponsive _Strahl_ with her.

Balthier frowned, and then made a lightning decision. “Vaan! As soon as the _Strahl’s_ rings move, you take off. Understood?”

Another hit to _Bahamut_ rocked the _Strahl._ Balthier grabbed an upper bunk to stay standing. “You can fly her, Vaan,” he said urgently. “Just do it like I told you.”

“Don’t worry,” Vaan said, taking the pilot’s seat.

Gabranth’s amber eyes opened, and he took a labored breath.

“Penelo,” Fran was saying, “watch for interference from _Bahamut’s_ skystone. The _Strahl’s_ a fickle girl. You keep her working for us.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Basch,” Gabranth murmured as the sky pirates exited the cockpit. “Look after Larsa, will you? If House Solidor should crumble, the Empire would fail, and civil war would take us all.”

“I understand,” Basch said.

Larsa held Gabranth’s limp hand tightly between his own.

Gabranth’s voice dropped further, finally acquiring the same texture as his brother’s. His eyes unfocused and began to stray. “Lord Larsa is our last hope.”

The next half-hour seemed to take days.

Gabranth was dying right before her eyes, and there was absolutely nothing Daina could do about it. His wounds were too severe for any potion to heal. Without a phoenix down, there was no hope of bringing him back.

Basch was quiet. He was not going to fight this cruel Fate that returned Noah to him just in time to steal his life away forever. Huddled in a corner, Daina grieved for them both.

“Vaan, the power’s back!” Penelo exclaimed. “We can go!”

“Right! Let’s go!”

There were a rumble and a thunk, and then the queer sensation in her stomach that told Daina the _Strahl_ had undocked.

“Grab onto something!” Vaan tightly called. He punched the accelerator. The _Strahl_ leaped away from _Bahamut._ Vaan sailed her through the raging battle until the _Garland_ reared into view.

The radio crackled with static and a Bhujerban cry of, “Sir! It’s the _Strahl!_ She’s left _Bahamut._ She’s moving away!”

“The _Strahl!”_ Ondore repeated triumphantly. “They made it! At last, the _Bahamut_ has fallen! The final test is upon us. The judges shall rule us no more! Main cannon on the _Alexander!”_

Basch was up and moving. He picked up the regular microphone and, with a look of deep concentration, spoke into it in a good approximation of an Archadian accent. “This is Judge Magister Gabranth,” he said. “All quarters cease fire!”

Larsa’s blue eyes lit up. He looked at Daina, then down at Gabranth. Daina accepted Gabranth’s hand from the prince and took his place at the bedside. Gabranth studied her calmly, an odd, not-quite smile touching his lips. Daina’s heart stuttered to a halt.

How close could these brothers be, estranged for so many years, twins or not? How much had Gabranth guessed about her? She feared she knew what that shy, resigned smile meant.

“I repeat,” Basch said, coldly in command. “All units of the Archadian army, hold your fire! The battle is over! As of this moment, we have signed a cease-fire with Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca, Her Royal Majesty.”

Basch handed the mike to Larsa.

“Attention,” said the boy. “This is Larsa Ferrinas Solidor. My brother Vayne has died with honor in battle. The Imperial Fleet is now under my command!”

More crackling from the radio. “Sir! Your orders, sir?” asked the same Bhujerban doubtfully.

“This is Ashelia Dalmasca,” Ashe said sternly before her uncle could respond, taking her turn with the mike. Vaan kept the _Strahl_ steady, nose to nose with the Resistance flagship, a minnow facing off with a shark.

“The Lady Ashe!” came Ondore’s voice. “Thank the gods you live!”

Ashe ignored his dubious joy. “I confirm what Judge Magister Gabranth and Larsa Solidor have said here. Please stand down your attack.” Some of the sternness left her voice as the truth slowly sank in. Softly, she added, “The war is over. Ivalice looks to the horizon. A new day has dawned.”

She lifted her face to the sunlight, closing her eyes. “We are free!”

Penelo gasped. “Look Vaan, the _Bahamut!”_

From her place by the bunks, Daina couldn’t see what Penelo had, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

“A message from the _Alexander!”_ shouted a Bhujerban on the _Garland._

“Take it,” Ondore commanded.

“This is Judge Zargabaath, captain of the _Alexander,_ flagship of the 12th Dalmascan Fleet,” said a man’s voice. “I address all ships in Rabanastre’s airspace. The _Bahamut_ must not be allowed to fall on the city of Rabanastre! We are preparing to ram her! Do not interfere!”

“Madness!” snarled the marquis.

Judge Zargabaath wasn’t listening. “Should she fall,” he continued relentlessly, “the paling will not hold, and all Rabanastre will be obliterated! Concentrate your fire on the _Alexander’s_ remains once _Bahamut_ is clear of the city.”

Suddenly, a familiar, sardonic voice butted in, snapping with static. “Hasty, aren’t they. I think it’s a little early to be throwing away our lives just yet.”

“Balthier?” Vaan spluttered. He looked all around the sky as if expecting to see the pirate floating out there like an errant piranha. “Wait, Balthier, where are you?”

“Ah, Vaan!” Balthier responded heartily, totally ignoring the question. “Sounds like you made it out okay! The _Strahl’s_ a fine airship, eh?”

“What does he think he’s doing?” Ondore demanded. “Balthier!”

“Marquis! Stop that fool judge on the _Alexander_ for me, would you? Just getting somewhere with these glossair rings. Almost done! Don’t want him ramming me before I fix them, do we?” Balthier cut off with a cry and a cough, backed by the muffled phut of an explosion.

“Balthier!” Ashe shouted, and then she remembered to press the button on the mike, broadcasting her words to the entire battlefield. “Do you understand exactly what it is you’re doing?”

“Princess!” Balthier said, amused. Imperial warships and Resistance fighters listened to the exchange in riveted silence. “No need to worry. I hope you haven’t forgotten my role in this little story. I’m the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.” Then, dropping the act, he said, “Let’s fly! Fran! Power to the glossair rings.”

Nothing but static answered.

“Fran?” A shorter pause. “Do I have to do everything around here?”

“Listen to me, Balthier,” Ashe said desperately. “Get out of _Bahamut_ immediately! Please, Balthier! You mustn’t die!” Her voice cracked, and she sagged to the floor, the mike clutched to her heart. “Please, Balthier. Come back.”

Fran’s pained voice was faint, overlaid by the cacophony of continuing destruction. “I’d say you’re in more of a supporting role.”

“Fran, please,” Balthier huffed.

Gabranth began struggling on his bunk, which caught Basch’s attention. The knight knelt. Gabranth grabbed his hand with the feverish strength of the dying. “Lose Larsa, and we lose the Empire,” he whispered imperatively. “Protect him. I would entrust him to no other’s care.”

“I will keep him from harm. I promise you,” Basch said. “For the Empire, and for Dalmasca.”

“Your words put me at ease, Brother.” Gabranth shrank into the mattress. “Sorry to leave you.”

For Daina, it was like watching the man she loved die. Basch bowed his golden head over his brother’s still form, his shoulders shaking. Daina stood by the partition that separated the cockpit from the bunks, tears streaming down her face. Behind her, Ashe was sobbing the way she had once cried in the desert, the microphone forgotten. Split between the two people she loved the most, Daina ended up comforting neither.

“Vaan, the _Strahl’s_ in your hands!” Balthier called, panting. The hitches between his words made it sound as though he was carrying something heavy. Like Fran. “You’d better take care of her, you hear? If there’s one scratch on her when I get back –”

He cut out. Static rushed to fill the space where his voice had been.

“Roger that,” Vaan said steadily. “We’ll be waiting for you.”

_“Balthier!”_ Ashe screamed.

* * *

Sinking as slowly as the setting sun, _Bahamut_ crashed to the desert sands. She dipped into the ground like a nail through wood. There she came to rest, backed by the violent palette of the western sky, listing to the south, a monument to the war for Dalmasca’s independence and a grave marker for two loyal sky pirates.

* * *

Although the first thing Dalmasca’s new queen did once she returned to her city was to send rescue units to the _Bahamut,_ no trace of Balthier or Fran could be found.

There was much to be done. Ashe declared the pirates missing in action and dismissed the bounty on Balthier’s head, sending the notice to all of the clans and to the hunter’s camp. Then, she turned her full attention to reclaiming her palace and her ministry, clearing the battlefield both in the sky and on the ground, and bringing Judge Zargabaath, Marquis Ondore, Al-Cid Margrace, and Emperor Larsa to the treaty table.

Daina also had much to do. She slipped out of the palace during negotiations to see Vaan and Penelo home. First, the orphans found a warehouse for rent in which they could dock the _Strahl,_ the gil a gift from Ashe. Second, they paid a visit to Migelo’s Sundries, where the good-natured bangaa and Tomaj, proprietor of the Sandsea, put out a feast for Daina, Vaan, Penelo, and the rest of the street orphans in a burst of sheer ebullience.

Penelo lived in her parent’s house, and it sounded like Vaan had a permanent invitation to stay there as well. Though the goodbyes were tearful, Penelo was determined that their friendship would continue.

“I’ll write to you!” she cried, waving.

“I look forward to it. Good luck!” Daina called back.

“Watch over her for us, okay?” Vaan added.

“Count on it.” Daina waved once and then made her solitary way back to the North End.

The night was long. All of Rabanastre seemed unwilling to sleep. Free Dalmascans celebrated in the streets and crowded the palace gates in the hopes of catching a glimpse of their new queen. But all wasn’t right or peaceful; riots broke out between Rabanastrans and the Imperials awaiting new orders. Daina led a mixed company of Resistance members and Imperial troops, descending from the palace on chocobos to control the riots. By dawn, no Imperial remained in the royal city except for Larsa and his cortege.

Daina was called to participate in negotiations with Zargabaath concerning border patrols and the import-export taxes between Dalmasca and what remained of Old Nabradia, which still belonged to the Archadian Empire. It was a lot of politics that her superiors should have dealt with in her stead, but she was the only one left, besides Ashe, who could do it. The war had claimed too many.

After the signing of the treaties, the council broke up. Daina took charge of the visiting dignitaries. Ashe and Larsa sequestered themselves to discuss how best to return Noah’s body to Archades so that he may be interred at his mother’s side, per his brother’s request.

Through it all, the one person uppermost in Daina’s thoughts never made an appearance.

* * *

Alone at last, Daina let herself onto one of the many balconies that wreathed the upper floors of the palace. It was hot, and she was exhausted, but the sandy breeze felt nice, and she could smell flowers. She climbed onto the railing and sat on the sun-warmed stone, swinging her feet and gazing at _Bahamut._

She had almost forgotten what it was like to live in the palace, to exist so close to acknowledged royalty. What with all the handmaidens and ministers scurrying about, there was no real privacy. Soon after she settled herself on the balcony rail, a lady-in-waiting escorted Basch out to her, curtseyed, and left.

He looked as tired as she felt. Daina smiled at him, and then returned her attention to the sky fortress. At a time such as this, much could be said, but she found that she didn’t want to say anything after all.

Basch joined her at the railing. He turned and leaned his back against it, looking up at the palace’s towers.

“I have spoken with Her Majesty,” he said quietly. “I will accompany Lord Larsa to Archades to further the cause of peace in Ivalice. We depart this evening.”

Somewhere, someone was playing music. It floated up to Daina, the notes intermittent and faint.

She closed her eyes.

She began to sing.

It was a Nabradian hymn, a song of mourning. She sang for those lost souls who could not have a proper funeral. For Noah fon Ronsenburg and the sky pirate Reddas, who had never been able to leave the mistakes of the past behind. For Vossler, a son of Dalmasca. For Lord King Rasler and for Reks, both of whom had been cut down so early in their lives. For her mother and her father, whom she had never allowed herself to mourn. For all of the soldiers who had fallen in battle. For Fran, and for Balthier.

Daina had always loved the hymn. Nabradians had understood beauty in a way that was now lost to the world. When she finished, the only sound that reached her was the sleepy chirping of a few birds as they returned to their nests to pass the heat of the day.

Basch caught up her hand, kissed it, and pressed it to his heart. “Thank you,” he said fervently, his low voice rougher than usual. His eyelashes were wet.

“So you will fulfill your promise to Noah,” she said, her gaze straying again to _Bahamut._

“I believe Lady Ashe no longer requires my protection,” he said. “She has proven herself.”

“As it should be.” The skin of his chest was warm under her fingers. A tear dropped from her cheek. “Then, will you kiss me goodbye, Basch?”

Something changed in his face, and his lips parted.

“I will uphold my vows here,” she explained. “I am still a knight of Dalmasca.”

The understanding in his eyes almost killed her, but this was her choice and her decision. She would not turn her back on Ashe.

Still holding her hand to his heart, Basch reached forward and cupped the back of her head, fingers combing through her hair, and kissed her. She breathed him in, hoping that she would remember this. His fire. His love.

She slid off the railing, her hand slipping out from beneath his. She turned her back on him.

This time, she was the one to walk away.


	12. Postlude

"Captain Praeities!"

Arms crossed, Daina looked over her shoulder, shaking her bangs out of her face. Her white-blonde hair fell in soft layers to her elbows, loose except for the sides, which she had clipped back with a barrette of shell carved in the shape of a Nabradian primrose. She held up a gloved hand, and her students ceased their exercise to stand at attention.

“A message from Montblanc of Clan Centurio,” the boy reported, falling to one knee before her.

“Thank you.” She accepted the parchment envelope from the messenger and then dismissed him.

“Continue!” she commanded, her voice echoing across the training hall. Immediately, the ranks of Dalmascan boys and girls resumed their practice, going through the seven forms of swordsmanship. One day, these children would become the new Knights of Dalmasca.

When the call had gone out for recruits, exactly one year ago today, the response had been overwhelming. Old Resistance members and the nomads, remembering the foreign lady knight and the exiled princess, had sent daughters as well as sons to train under Daina Praeities. The newly promoted captain had felt a little less confident in her abilities, but she loved her work. It brought to mind her childhood and her own training. These children seemed to look up to her as much as she had respected her own father.

Daina paced around the perimeter of the hall. Her soft brown boots, buckled around her ankles, left silent footfalls on the marble flooring. When Ashe had laid the original Order of Knights to rest, Daina had chosen a new uniform. She wore slim linen trousers, a sleeveless green tunic, and a dark gray bolero jacket. The yakei and the iga blade, belted around her hips, hung low behind her. They tapped against the backs of her thighs as she walked. The green tassel dangled from the yakei’s pommel. In all, it was a less showy uniform than the pretty green coat and linen shorts, and Daina was proud to wear it.

With half an eye on her students, Daina unfolded Montblanc’s letter. The round, childish writing inside brought the well-groomed moogle and his yellow pompon to mind. The message was short. Montblanc’s “Belito” ploy had worked to draw the headhunter that had been preying on Clan Centurio members into the open. Ba’Gamnan and his crew were slain.

“Strange thing is,” Montblanc wrote, slipping into Kuponese even on parchment, “it wasn’t one of my clan who did the deed, kupo. Thought you’d like to know.”

Daina smiled, returning the letter to its envelope. She knew who had killed Ba’Gamnan, as she suspected Montblanc did, and a more fitting end to the bangaa’s tyranny she couldn’t imagine.

A month ago, a note had come for Ashe from Vaan, but was penned by someone else’s hand: _Give this to our queen for me, would you?_ Tucked within the envelope had been Rasler’s wedding ring.

Daina remembered Ashe’s contented smile that afternoon after she placed Rasler’s ring in a mother-of-pearl bowl with her own and went to survey her city from her private balcony. Returning the ring had been Balthier’s way of setting Ashe free. Wherever he was, Daina had a feeling that Fran was with him, and she was satisfied.

For tonight was Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca’s coronation.

The practice session ended. The children dispersed to their jobs or their homes, leaving Daina to move on to her next task and duty. Ashe would not be the only royal in attendance. Nobility and delegates from all over Ivalice had been invited to Rabanastre for the ceremony, and all had sent back their cards with a “yes.” Members of Clan Margrace had sent Rozarrian gifts with their cards, and the Archadian emperor, to Penelo’s delight, had early promised his presence. Tonight, Captain Praeities was determined, would go without a single hitch.

As Daina strode toward her lady’s apartments, her hand went to her pocket and the small, velvet box nestled there. She and Basch regularly corresponded. According to his letters, he was doing well. And, according to his last, he would “continue to give chase.”

Daina’s feet slowed, and then stopped altogether. For the hundredth time, she opened the little box. Nestled in silk, a perfect wargod’s band glinted at her.

In Nabradia, before its fall, soldiers often gave their lovers wargod’s bands before deployment. They were symbols of passionate love from afar. Her mother had worn one. The ring was dainty enough for Daina’s finger, but she had not tried it on. How Basch had learned of the custom, or come across an intact wargod’s band in the Nabreus Deadlands, she did not know.

_I await your answer._

Daina returned the box to her pocket. How could she think of marrying Basch when she had sworn her life to Ashe? Why could he not leave their brief romance in the past where it belonged?

* * *

The ceremony took place in the same ballroom where Vayne had held his welcoming fete. This time, the ballroom and the gardens were filled only with friends. There was music, food catered jointly by Migelo and Tomaj, bouquets of flowers, cages of songbirds, dancing, laughter, and, most of all, hope for the future.

The same kiltias who had wed Ashelia and Rasler presided over the coronation. He placed Raminas’s crown on her fair head, invoking the Scion of Light, Faram. The assembly erupted in cheers, tossing flower petals on the carpet where Ashe would walk. Dalmasca’s queen was radiant in her golden dress. She danced with Lord Larsa and Al-Cid Margrace. Her loyal knight stood at attention by her throne, overseeing the party without taking part.

Larsa, who had grown several inches but not lost his precocious smile, approached Daina and said in greeting, “Well met, Captain Praeities.”

“Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty.” Daina bowed.

“Please come with me,” he said.

_Bahamut_ remained where she had fallen. In the year since her defeat, the rains had come to the desert and filled the crater around the sky fortress. Now, a shallow lake gleamed in the moonlight. A white bridge led from the desert sands to the fortress itself, so that tourists might visit her and pay their respects to those who had died.

Larsa and Daina walked along the gardens overlooking _Bahamut_ while the celebration continued behind them. Judge Magister Gabranth followed, his charge the young emperor. Then, smiling, Larsa moved away from them, his hands folded behind his back.

Daina steeled herself for what she would see when she turned around: A man in familiar black judicer’s plate, who was just then removing the helm. He had cut his hair. It was shorn, as Noah’s had been, but Basch’s scar would never fade, and he still wore a thin beard. Daina ducked her head, trying to control her emotions. How many nights had she dreamed of him and had woken to a damp pillow? How many times had she reread his letters, straining to hear the timbre of his voice through the printed words?

He did not speak. He was waiting for her. He had offered her his heart and his hand, and it was up to her to answer, no matter how embarrassing she suddenly found such a prospect.

She took the velvet box from her pocket, hesitated, and then held it out to him. “Thank you, Basch, but I’m afraid that I cannot accept this.”

Slowly, his gloved hand came up. Daina dropped the box into it.

“Why?”

Just the one word. It made Daina shiver like a wet cat. Had she honestly convinced herself that their love was dead and past? Would she never cease being such an abyssal fool?

“You know why,” she said, stubbornly trying to hold onto her pride. “I have my duties here. I cannot abandon her.”

Basch moved. She looked involuntarily up, expecting that he was leaving her. Instead, his lips descended on hers. Such unbearable sweetness overcame her that she was hardly aware of the discomfort of his armor when she put her arms around his neck.

“Do you love me?” he asked against her mouth.

“Yes,” she sighed. A thousand times over, _yes._

He combed his fingers through her hair, ran the backs of them over her cheeks, kissed her until she swooned. “I have not been idle these past months,” he said, holding her head so that he could kiss her jaw, her neck. “Ever did my thoughts turn to you, the only one to ever vanquish me.”

He broke the kiss, his odd half-smile flashing when she made a sound of protest, and knelt before her. He removed the wargod’s band from its nest of creamy silk and put it on her finger.

“I should have given this to you in person to begin with,” he murmured.

“I would still have refused you,” she said weakly.

“Give me a reason,” he said in his low, rough voice. His eyes smoldered. He brought Daina’s hand to his lips and then hovered there, not quite touching it. Her skin burned with each exhale. “Tell me to go, and I will go. But lady, know this: If you send me away again, I will not live to see Archades. A man cannot live without his heart.”

Ashe, Daina thought wildly, she must think of Ashe! She must break this spell. It would be easy – too easy! – to throw everything away for this man. She yearned for him, to let his flame burn her as long as they could burn together. In desperation, she looked over his head and saw both Ashe and Larsa. They stood backlit by the ongoing fete, watching. With a jolt, she realized that they had set this up between them. Penelo and Vaan were present, too, peeping over the low garden wall through the leaves of a flowering bush.

Ashe smiled in a way that Daina knew well; the queen was giving Daina permission to go. At that moment, Daina saw what she had refused to see for a year: Ashe had been all right for a long time. She had no need for Daina. Not any longer.

Still smiling, Ashe and Larsa returned to the ballroom.

Daina, should she choose it, was free.

She waited on the edge of a precipice. Waited for a voice of reason that never came. Waited for the courage to fling herself over.

“Lady Praeities, will you marry me?”

She did the only thing she could.

She said, “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to Final Fantasy Worlds Apart (http://www.ffwa.org/ff12/script.php) for providing the game script online, and to Video Games Heaven (http://videogamesheaven.net/movie-final-fantasy-xii-movie.htm) for providing the game cinematics online.  
> My eternal thanks go to my wonderful reviewers. Without all of your enthusiasm, praise, and encouragement, I would never have been able to see this project through to the end!  
> ~Anne  
> 4/2/2010 – 6/30/2010


End file.
